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THE HOUSEWIVES 
OF EDENRISE 


BY 


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FLORENCE POPHAM 


“ Deceite, wepyng, spynnyng, God hath yive 
To wommen kyndely whil they may lyve.” 

Chaucer 



NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1902 


THE LIBRARY OF 
OOMQRE88, > 
TMf> Recsived 

OCT. i6 1902 

(VWPIQMT WT1TY 

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COPY 3. 


Copyright, 1902 

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 


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Published October, 1902 



CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — An afternoon call 1 

II. — Our children 13 

III. — A ladies’ Shakespeare society ... 25 

IV. — The curate’s bees 38 

V. — Mrs. Welwyn’s matrimonial troubles . . 51 

VI. — The appearance op the siren in Eden- 

RISE ••...••• 71 

VII. — Mrs. Greenlaw inquires the character 

OF A SERVANT OP MrS. PeACOCK . . 85 

VIII. — The joys op gardening and the disad- 
vantages OF A privet hedge . . . 100 

IX. — Chiefly about jealousy . , . .115 

X. — Among the buttercups .... 130 

XI. — A children’s party 141 

XII. — A village entertainment . . . .162 

XIII. — Aunt Jane 173 

XIV. — Mrs. Greenlaw and the fancy fSte . 186 

XV. — Aunt Jane’s fortune 207 

XVI. — A REVELATION 220 

XVII. — Mrs. Welwyn’s view of Mrs. Greenlaw . 233 
XVIII. — Mrs. Greenlaw’s point of view . . 245 

XIX. — A SEWING-MEETING AT WHICH THE HOUSE- 
WIVES OP EdENRISE EXPRESS THEIR OPIN- 
IONS OP Mrs. Greenlaw .... 268 


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THE HOUSEWIVES OP EDENRISE 


CHAPTER I 

AN AFTERNOON CALL 

“The Drawing-room, with its feeble manners and 
effects of curtains and embroidery, gives its tone to our 
lives nowadays .” — Edward Carpenter. 

It was Mrs. Peacock’s “ At Home ” 
day, and her drawing-room — a room which 
is the envy of the housewives of Edenrise 
— was specially decked out with vases of 
flowers, frilled sofa-cushions, silver knick- 
knacks, and elegant trifles of all kinds. 

Mrs. Peacock sat pouring out tea and 
beaming upon her little circle of friends — 
on Mrs. Manners, who sat on her right, 
large, serene, and somewhat ill-dressed ; on 
pretty little Mrs. Welwyn, on her left, who 
looked a trifle conscious of her new and 
dainty garments; on Miss Green, the cu- 
rate’s sister and late Newnham student; 

1 


i^ottgeiviijesi of (Eoenrtoe 


and on me, who took it upon myself to hand 
round the tea-cakes, and to replace them 
carefully in the fender until they should 
be again required. 

Conversation flowed as conversation is 
wont to do on such occasions. Mrs. Pea- 
cock compared notes with Mrs. Welwyn as 
to the height, weight, and size of her little 
three-year-old girl, and tried not to display 
too much triumph on finding that her child 
was two inches taller and three inches 
larger round than Mrs. Welwyn’s. 

However,” she said modestly, “I do 
not think that it is always the finest chil- 
dren who are the strongest.” 

Oh, no, indeed ! ” said Mrs. Manners 
seriously. “ I am always anxious when a 
child of mine is really fat, especially if it 
gets a cold on its chest. I lost one, you 
know, and he was one of the finest children 
I ever saw.” 

Mrs. Welwyn looked relieved and Mrs. 
Peacock put on a sympathetic expression, 
though I know that she considers seven 
children — which is the number Mrs. Man- 
ners has been able to rear — somewhat ex- 
cessive. 


2 


SLn afternoon Call 


I passed the tea-cakes to Mrs. Manners 
and said, to change the subject: 

“ Do you know that the house next to 
mine, ‘ The Glen,’ is let? ” 

‘‘No. You don’t say so?” said Mrs. 
Manners. “ It has been so long vacant that 
I had given up expecting it to be taken. I 
do hope you will have pleasant neigh- 
bours.” 

“I hope so too. I wonder what sort 
of person has taken it,” said Mrs. Wel- 
wyn. 

“ The chemist told me, and the house- 
agent told him, that it was a lady — a widow 
— no haggler over trifles, but young and 
very pleasant,” said Mrs. Peacock. 

“And the house is being redecorated 
throughout,” I remarked. 

“ She must be in a great hurry to get in, 
for as I passed the house last night, after 
dark, I saw that the men were working by 
candle-light. I just spoke to the foreman, 
and he asked me if I would like to look 
round. I suppose you have seen the inside, 
Mrs. Howard-Jones? ” Mrs. Peacock said, 
turning to me. 

“ No, I have not, as it happens,” I an- 
3 


of (EOenrioe 


swered, regretting that I had not made bet- 
ter use of my opportunities. 

“Well,” said Mrs. Peacock, when she 
saw that she had our undivided attention, 
“it is really being done up in style, and 
in a way that I believe is considered most 
artistic now. I don’t like it myself; I 
shouldn’t like it in my own house at all. 
There is a great deal of whitewash and 
flat picture-rails, white paint, plain walls, 
and a frieze of dancing-girls, green with 
white hair, in the drawing-room. And in 
the hall and dining-room, brown paper and 
a dado of matting.” 

“ You don’t mean ordinary brown paper 
like one uses to wrap parcels in?” said 
Mrs. Welwyn. 

“ Yes, I do. Perfectly ordinary brown 
paper, I assure you, only not such a cheer- 
ful colour as one usually sees on parcels,’^ 
protested Mrs. Peacock. 

“ I never heard of such a thing,” Mrs. 
Welwyn said. “ It is true, though, that I 
wanted to have a plain-coloured paper in 
my drawing-room when it was done up the 
other day. But,” she went on plaintively, 
“ Stapleford’s young man said plain papers 
4 


Afternoon Call 


were the last refuge of the inartistic and 
I must have a pattern, so of course I had to 
have a pattern, and now I keep thinking I 
should have liked a plain wall better.” 

“I always think your drawing-room 
so pretty, and I admire the paper — pink 
grapes and purple leaves are so unusual- 
looking,” Mrs. Manners said kindly. 

Mrs. Peacock glanced proudly round 
upon her French striped paper, her bro- 
caded curtains, and draped piano. 

“ In furnishing a room one has to con- 
sider the style of the room itself and of 
the people who are to inhabit it,” she said. 

“ Just so,” remarked Miss Green, who 
had looked a little bored up to this time. 

And what I think makes a room look real- 
ly habitable and interesting is books — plen- 
ty of books, and bookcases of all sorts and 
sizes.” 

Of course there are no books or book- 
cases in Mrs. Peacock’s drawing-room, un- 
less an illustrated edition of Tennyson’s 
Maud and a volume or so of Picturesque 
Europe may be called books. 

“ In a library, or even in a dining-room, 
books look very well and are quite in place, 
5 


of CEtienrioe 


but hardly, I think, in a drawing-room,’’ 
said Mrs. Peacock. 

“ Talking of books,” said Miss Green, 
turning to Mrs. Welwyn, “ how is your hus- 
band getting on with his book? Has he 
decided on the title yet? ” (We all take a 
deep interest in Mr. Welwyn’s book, and 
expect it to reflect great credit on Edenrise 
when it is published.) 

I think that the title is to be The Con- 
dition of France Immediately Before the 
Eevolution; at any rate that is the sub- 
ject,” said Mrs. Welwyn, ‘‘ and he is, he 
says, making great progress now, but he 
will be obliged to go to Paris again this 
week to collect material and to make some 
notes in the Bibliotheque Nationale.” 

I should have thought he could have 
got everything he wanted in the British 
Museum,” said Mrs. Peacock, who likes to 
appear to know something of any subject 
under discussion, or to change the subject 
rapidly if she does not. There is, I be- 
lieve, everything in the British Museum 
Library ” 

‘‘ But not French manuscripts — I think 
it is manuscripts and letters and things like 
6 


SLn afternoon Call 


that that he goes to study. Yes, I am sure 
it is manuscripts and letters that he has 
special permission to copy,” said Mrs. 
^Welwyn with some pride; for though she 
and her husband have very little in com- 
mon, and I imagine are not in sympathy 
on most points, yet she feels it a distinction 
to be the wife of a man who is compiling 
a serious work and is obliged to go to 
Paris and study in the Bibliotheque Na- 
tionale. 

Mrs. Peacock looked properly im- 
pressed. 

“ How interesting ! ” she said, and then 
went on with a smile, “ My husband is al- 
ways regretting the days before we were 
married, when he had time to devote to 
original research, but now, of course, with 
a family and a practice to attend to, and 
one thing and another ” 

“ He is the most valuable member of so- 
ciety in Edenrise,” said Mrs. Manners. 

Mrs. Peacock acknowledged the compli- 
ment with a slight inclination of the head, 
and continued : “ But do you know that my 
husband actually did once write a book, in 
collaboration with another doctor, on the 
7 


of (Eoenrioe 


tThyroid Gland, and since we were married, 
too!” 

How interesting! ” said Mrs. Welwyn 
in lier turn. WTiat is the thyroid 
gland? ” 

“ Well, it is a kind of gland in the neck, 
and if it is too big you have goitre and if it 
is too small you are an idiot,” said Mrs. 
Peacock, displaying her superior knowl- 
edge lightly but with evident pleasure. 

^^How dreadful!” said Mrs. Welwyn 
nervously, putting up her hand and feel- 
ing her throat first on one side and then on 
the other. 

“ Has mumps anything to do with 
it ! ” asked Mrs. Manners, whose children 
had lately been suffering from that com- 
plaint. 

^‘Well, no, I don’t think so. No, that 
must be another gland. The thyroid gland 
goes very deep — I fancy it must be near the 
brain somehow, but if you haven’t got it 
and are an idiot, you can be treated with a 
preparation of the thyroid glands of ani- 
mals, and you soon get quite sensible. Dr. 
Peacock had a boy to treat. He was a 
dreadful child, and I must say I thought he 
8 


2Ln afternoon Call 


was worse when he was cured than he was 
before.’^ 

I laughed, and Mrs. Peacock hastened 
to add : 

“ Of course he was much less of an idiot 
— it was astonishing to see how quickly he 
gained intelligence — but then, you know, he 
got so dreadfully mischievous that we 
could not keep him in the house.’' 

What happened to him? ” asked Mrs. 
Welwyn anxiously. We had all become 
deeply interested, for women always are in- 
terested in medical matters, even in the 
dullest and most unpromising cases. 

I believe that his mother gave him an 
overdose of the stutf and he died,” she said. 
^‘But, anyhow, it was a most interesting 
case, and Dr. Peacock’s book was mostly 
about it.” 

It would have been still more interest- 
ing if he had not died,” murmured Miss 
Green. 

‘‘If you had seen the boy you would 
have thought it a happy release,” said Mrs. 
Peacock. 

“ WTiat did you say the name of the lady 
was that had taken ‘ The Glen ’ ? ” asked 
9 


of (Eornrioe 


Mrs. Manners, returning to the subject pre- 
viously under discussion. 

“ I heard that her name was Greenlaw 
and that she is a widow. It is rather much 
of a house for one woman, I should have 
thought, but still — ” Mrs. Peacock waved 
her hand to indicate that as far as she was 
concerned every one might follow their own 
fancies. 

When shall we call upon her? Let me 
see. Supposing she moves in on Satur- 
day.^^ Mrs. Manners made elaborate cal- 
culations which puckered her brow and 
made her look ten years older. It is now 
W ednesday ; say she does not move on Sat- 
urday, but on Monday — Saturday is a bad 
day for moving — then we ought to allow 
her a week to settle her furniture and hang 
her pictures ; that would be Monday week. 
Most likely the carpets will be put down 
before she moves in.” 

“ I don’t think that’s a good plan,” put 
in Mrs. Peacock. Think of the muddy 
boots and the straw and things ! It ruins 
carpets ! ” 

Mrs. Manners proceeded calmly : 

After that there will be the books to 
10 


an afternoon Call 


arrange on the shelves, and the cushions to 
recover, the curtains to be altered to fit the 
windows, and the china and glass to be put 
away in the cupboards. In any case I 
really do not think we ought to call upon 
her till Thursday week.^^ 

“ I think, considering all things, that I 
shall leave it till the Friday,” I said. 

And so it was arranged that the new- 
comer should be left in peace to settle her 
household gods until that day, and on that 
day we would call and the advantages of 
Edenrise society would burst upon her. 

Dr. Peacock and Mr. Green, the curate, 
came in at this point, and to them we dis- 
closed all we knew of the expected parish- 
ioner and patient. 

Dr. Peacock is extremely genial and 
a favourite with all the women in Edenrise, 
and the curate is certainly not less popular, 
for he is distinctly fond of feminine so- 
ciety, has a good voice, and a particularly 
intimate manner of shaking hands — so in- 
timate, indeed, that at times it almost 
makes one blush. 

We have a scheme on hand for mak- 
ing him into a vicar and giving him com- 
2 11 


^oueietoti)e& of Contrtfi^e 


plete control of the chapel-of-ease in the 
village, which is now subject to the rector 
of the parish who officiates at the church 
three or four miles away. I am a little 
doubtful about the matter myself, for, 
though I know that a taste of cricket and 
croquet, a sonorous voice, and a predilec- 
tion for female society are indispensable 
qualities in a curate, I am not so sure 
about the requirements of a vicar. And I 
cannot quite see how a bazaar is to be in- 
strumental in turning a chapel-of-ease into 
a parish church and a curate into a vicar, 
though Miss Green has explained the mat- 
ter at some length. I must ask Howard. 
Howard, by-the-bye, is my husband^s Chris- 
tian name, and we have tacked it on to our 
surname Jones, to distinguish us from 
other J oneses, and to remind people of the 
aristocratic connections we really have got. 
I must, I say, ask Howard. 


12 


CHAPTER II 


OUR CHILDREN 

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when 
he is old he will not depart from it.” — Proverbs. 

We housewives of Edenrise naturally 
find our most congenial occupation in 
dressing and bringing up our children, and 
in managing our houses genteelly on the 
small incomes which our menfolk are occu- 
pied in acquiring in the city. 

Edenrise, though quite in the country, 
has many advantages apart from its natu- 
ral attractions — there is a good train-serv- 
ice from London, the journey only occupy- 
ing some forty-five minutes, the houses are 
charmingly grouped about the village 
green, and we flatter ourselves that our 
social life is unique. Miss Green, the cu- 
rate^s sister, has instituted literary after- 
noons, and we have singing practices and 
sewing-meetings, besides the ordinary so- 
13 


of (EOenrioe 


cial gatherings in which Mrs. Peacock, 
the doctor^s wife, takes the lead. M^e have 
great faith in Mrs. Peacock’s taste in mat- 
ters of dress as well as in her social tal- 
ents, and at the beginning of the season we 
never think of getting new clothes for our 
children until we have seen how hers will 
he dressed. When her little girls appear 
in very short sailor frocks and enormous 
sunbonnets, our little girls follow suit, their 
costumes varying in effect according to the 
skill of their mothers or nurses in the mak- 
ing of them. I have not myself, however, 
had quite such implicit faith in Mrs. Pea- 
cock since last summer, when our girl-chil- 
dren were dressed, French fashion, in long 
skirts and tight lace caps, for Phyllis Pea- 
cock got a sunstroke and my little Ama- 
belle scandalized the neighbourhood by ty- 
ing her skirts up round her armpits and 
playing leapfrog with the boys on the green. 
Her father, I am sorry to say, said that 
he considered it a perfectly rational pro- 
ceeding, and that he must insist on hav- 
ing his children dressed sensibly. This I 
thought particularly hard, for Amabelle 
looked charming in her long petticoats when 
14 


Cliiluren 


she kept them in their proper place, and, 
as I took the opportunity of saying to 
Howard, I had not thought it necessary to 
dress her in a suitable costume for leap- 
frog! But he was quite firm on this occa- 
sion, and I had to make her an entire new 
set of clothes, much as I grudged the time 
and expense entailed. 

He said, moreover, that Dick looked a 
disgusting little prig in a khaki suit with 
a wide-brimmed hat caught up on one side 
with a pheasant’s feather ; hut I was deter- 
mined he should wear the things, even 
though I was not altogether pleased witli 
the effect myself, because Harold Peacock 
wore them, and one likes one’s children to 
look like other people’s children. Of course 
Howard persists in saying he prefers them 
to look like his own children ; but that is the 
way with men — they decline to take any in- 
terest in discussing beforehand how their 
children shall be dressed, and then they 
condemn the finished article. 

If it is difficult to dress children suit- 
ably, it is, I find, far more difficult to train 
them in a satisfactory manner ; one’s own 
children seem such original little things 
15 


of dEDenrts^e 


that one fears to stamp out any ideas they 
may have by too much severity, and I know 
that I am sometimes wanting in firmness 
with mine. Only this afternoon, for in- 
stance, I happened to be dressing to go out, 
and Amabelle, who is six, sat on the bed, 
her brown eyes wide open, watching me 
while I sought for such things as gloves, 
pins, and ties. She was quite quiet and a 
little sad because I had refused to take her 
out with me, until suddenly, as I moved 
from the glass, she caught sight of herself 
and exclaimed angrily: 

Mother, what for did you born me 
with eyes like these ? I wanted blue eyes ! 

Poor little girl,” I said soothingly, ‘‘ it 
wasn’t really my fault, except that I quite 
forgot to order your eyes. I only stipu- 
lated for your father’s good looks and my 
well-formed ears and sweet temper. I am 
so sorry you are not pleased. I rather like 
your eyes myself.” 

Amabelle was somewhat pacified by my 
humble tone, and, pursuing a course of 
ideas of her own, remarked : 

‘^And when I was born I s’pose you 
looked at my teeth to see how old I was? ” 
16 


®ttr Cl)iU5ren 


Yes, darling,” I said, “ and do you 
know you hadn^t a single one, and I couldn^t 
tell whether you were as old as the hills 
or as young as a tiny rose-bud.” 

“ And then did you give me a knife to 
cut some with?” she asked, and I was 
afraid she was going on to ply me with im- 
possible questions, as she so often does. 
But it never fails to surprise one that chil- 
dren who are so penetrating and persist- 
ent at some moments, are so curiously 
flighty at others. 

Amabelle’s gaze was fastened now upon 
my hat, and she sighed and said pensively : 

“ I know it wouldn’t be sootible for a 
little girl, but I should so like a black hat 
with feathers and a veil.” 

She seemed so depressed that I tried to 
cheer her up by putting the hat on her head 
and fastening the veil over her curls. 

“ Now I am a real mammy, and I want a 
purse with tickets in it to pay a call with,” 
she said gaily as she strutted up and down 
the room. ‘‘ Can’t I go out with you! Be a 
kind little mother, please let me.” 

I began to shake my head, for I had told 
her more than once that I could not take 
17 


of dDOenrtoe 


her, but could I resist when she quoted in 
her most tragic manner, Oh, mammy, ‘ it 
is twice ten tedious years since I a holiday 
have seen ! ’ ” 

Of course I took her with me, and of 
course she disgraced me by her behaviour. 
She sat on a chair quietly enough at Mrs. 
Welwyn^s for some time, but, finding her- 
self taken no notice of, began to fidget, and 
finally, when there was a lull in the conver- 
sation, she asked herself in a clear voice : 

“ Are they beauty ladies % Then she 
paused a moment for effect before she an- 
swered herself in emphatic tones, “No, 
they are not beauty ladies ! ” 

There was a general laugh at this, 
though I knew Mrs. Welwyn and Mrs. Pea- 
cock would remember it against me and my 
system of bringing up my children. Then 
Amabelle asked, with a shy smile, if she 
might go and see the kitchen. 

It is always her first request on entering 
a strange house, and I had particularly im- 
pressed it upon her this afternoon that she 
was on no account to make it. 

“ Dear child,’’ said Mrs. Welwyn gra- 
ciously, “ she shall see the kitchen and all 
18 


(f^VLt Ctiiloren 


the other rooms if she likes. I am so sorry 
Nancy and Roger are not here to amuse 
her.” 

She rang the hell for the maid, and to 
my relief Amabelle was taken away. 

When she had left us Mrs. Peacock be- 
gan talking again about the great topic of 
interest among us just now — the lady who 
has taken The Glen.” I had had an op- 
portunity of looking in since I listened to 
Mrs. Peacock^s account of the internal 
decorations of the house, and I now made 
an attempt to sketch the character of the 
lady who is to inhabit it from the taste dis- 
played in paint, paper, etc. 

It would hardly be safe to infer any- 
thing about me from the pattern of my 
wall-paper,” said Mrs. Welwyn with a wist- 
ful smile at the luscious pink grapes and 
purple leaves on her wall. 

Her remark set me counting the num- 
ber of grapes in the bunches opposite to me, 
and every time I counted them, even in the 
same bunch, I made the number different. 
Meanwhile, Mrs. Peacock and Mrs. Wel- 
wyn continued their conversation. 

In any case, she must be very artistic 
19 


of (EOenrtoe 


and, I fancy, original. A person quite after 
our own hearts, I am sure,” Mrs. Peacock 
said. 

“ Do you know if she lives quite 
alone? ” asked Mrs. Welwyn, who is not so 
energetic or so clever at collecting little bits 
of gossip as Mrs. Peacock. 

“ Yes, quite alone, and I hear that she 
looks very young to be a widow, poor thing ! 
Her husband must have been dead some 
time, too,” continued Mrs. Peacock 
thoughtfully, “ or she would not be taking 
a house like ‘ The Glen,’ and having it done 
up regardless of expense in this way.” 

« Why not? ” I asked innocently, trying 
to take my fascinated eyes from the grapes 
on the wall to fix them upon my compan- 
ions. 

“Why not? It wouldn’t be decent,” 
Mrs. Peacock returned severely. “ He must 
have been dead two years at least.” 

“I don’t think we want a newcomer,” 
Mrs. Welwyn said, sighing. “We are very 
well off as we are.” 

“ Nonsense ; a little fresh blood is just 
what we do want, and I am prepared to find 
Mrs. Greenlaw charming,” said Mrs. Pea- 
20 


(Dur Cl^ilDrtn 


cock. It is so lucky for us, too, that she 
is a widow. Our husbands need not call 
upon her, and we shall not have to invite 
her to dinner if we do not like.” 

“ That is an advantage, certainly,” said 
Mrs. Welwyn, laughing. “ I can never get 
my husband to call on a stranger.” 

“ Nor I mine,” I said. 

“ I really haven’t any trouble with Dr. 
Peacock in that respect,” Mrs. Peacock 
said, looking a trifle superior. ‘‘Is your 
husband at home now? ” she asked Mrs. 
Welwyn, changing the subject rather sud- 
denly. 

Mrs. Welwyn, I thought, looked con- 
scious and even slightly annoyed as she 
answered in the negative, but I did not 
know whether to put her irritation down to 
Mrs. Peacock’s question or to her hus- 
band’s absence from home. 

Mrs. Peacock said something in a con- 
ciliating tone about it being necessary now- 
adays to allow husbands freedom to follow 
their own pursuits, and she was so glad Mr. 
Welwyn was getting on so fast with his 
book. 

Mrs. Welwyn flushed up and turned her 
21 




back on Mrs. Peacock to greet Amabelle, 
who came back at that moment. 

I took my leave with the child, who 
was in a very happy mood and delighted 
with her investigations, which were, I 
am afraid, of too penetrating a nature. 
She was a good deal upset in the night, 
and I was obliged to go and console her 
more than once, and, after all, her pain 
only completely disappeared when she 
was comfortably settled in my bed and 
my chances of a decent night were at an 
end. 

I find it extremely difficult to be firm 
with Amabelle. With Dick it comes easier, 
and I feel sure that it would come quite 
natural to me to treat the Peacock children 
with firmness — perhaps even with severity 
— for they are allowed to make perfect lit- 
tle nuisances of themselves. It is all done 
on a system, too. Their father has modern 
views on the training of children, and he is 
strongly of opinion that no reasonable 
childish impulse should be thwarted, and 
their mother has adopted the idea because 
it affords her a plausible excuse for thor- 
oughly spoiling them. Accordingly, if they 
22 


(Bnt CtiilUrm 


wish to handle your lace collar with jammy 
fingers, or dance on your grand piano, or 
slide on your polished floor with muddy 
boots, it is a perfectly reasonable childish 
impulse, and must on no account be inter- 
fered with. 

My dear Harold,’^ I heard Dr. Pea- 
cock say to his little boy, “ if you wish to 
slide on the banisters you must do so on 
your own responsibility. I warn you that 
you may fall and hurt yourself.” Harold 
desisted for that day, but the next he slid 
down on his own responsibility, lost his bal- 
ance, and fell headlong. Fortunately for 
him, his fall was broken by the best bonnet 
of a lady caller who happened to be pass- 
ing through the hall at the moment, and 
though Dr. Peacock attended her for some 
considerable time for nervous shock, 
neither she nor the child was seriously in- 
jured. The bonnet, I believe, never recov- 
ered. 

A little firmness would, I am sure, do 
Harold a great deal of good and prevent 
many such disasters, and yet to a certain 
extent I sympathize with Dr. Peacock’s 
ideas, and do not believe in the system of 
23 


of (Eornrioe 


thwarting children that Mrs. Welwyn 
adopts with hers. 

“ My dear, don’t do that.” “ Yon 
mustn’t do this.” For Heaven’s sake 
don’t go there ! ” she is forever saying, and 
it is simply because she is nervous herself 
and has not enough imagination to enter 
into their foolhardy little natures. And, 
after all, the children know they will get 
what they want when they have wearied 
her by whining and worrying for it. I 
should often like to say to her, Why not 
let them do what they want to do without 
all the trouble of being cross and thwarting 
them? ” But I am beginning to be cautious 
about expressing my opinion on such mat- 
ters and to realize that it is easier to find 
flaws in other people’s systems than to per- 
fect one’s own. I am quite ready to admit 
that I am sometimes weak with Amabelle, 
that I ought not to have taken her out this 
afternoon, for instance, just because she 
made an apt quotation from John Gilpin. 
I should not like her to grow up like Miss 
Green, whose only really original remarks 
are quotations. I have decided to be much 
firmer with her in future. 

24 


CHAPTER III 

A LADIES’ SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY 

“ Solitary reading is apt to give the headache. Besides, 
who knows that you do read ? ” — LamVs Letters. 

There is one thing for which I shall al- 
ways he grateful to Miss Green, and that is 
that she introduced Shakespeare into Eden- 
rise. I do not mean to say that we had 
never heard of Shakespeare; we were, in- 
deed, quite familiar with his name, and 
some of us, who have had the advantage of 
a high-school education, can still remember 
the notes to one or two of the plays, and 
even portions of the Primer, which divides 
his work into sections or layers, with a fan- 
tastic name to each. But as for reading 
Shakespeare’s plays since that time, what 
housewife would ever have thought of such 
a thing if it had not been for Miss Green*? 

She invited us all to tea one afternoon, 
and while we were drinking the very strong 
25 


of Coenrtoe 


tea and eating the heavy cake that she and 
her brother are so fond of, she began to talk 
of her plan for starting a Shakespeare so- 
ciety at Edenrise. I immediately took np 
the idea, and astonished some of the other 
housewives by my knowledge of the Prim- 
er. And I added, hoping to further im- 
press them, something about Shakespeare’s 
legal wife and a “ second-best bedstead.” 

Miss Green paid little attention to this, 
but, turning suddenly, asked me in her mat- 
ter-of-fact way if I ever read Othello and 
Coriolanus, and I answered a little crest- 
fallen, Hardly ever,” and resolved to be 
more careful about displaying my knowl- 
edge — or ignorance — before her in future. 
However, we decided then and there to 
start a society for the serious reading of 
Shakespeare’s plays. Mr. Green, who was 
handing round the tea and cake, asked anx- 
iously if he might be admitted as a member. 
Miss Green hesitated, and wavered for a 
moment. All the other ladies expressed 
themselves as so charmed at the idea of his 
joining us that I began to fear she would 
give way. I therefore remained obsti- 
nately silent, realizing that, as he would be 
26 


31 ilaDies;’ ^l^afee^peare 


only man, we should be obliged to let 
him read Hamlet and Othello and all the 
best men^s parts, and I said to myself scorn- 
fully, “ Ten to one he will intone them.” 

When Miss Green finally decided that it 
was to be purely a ladies^ society, and that 
not even a curate could be admitted, I was 
delighted, but Mrs. Peacock and Mrs. Wel- 
wyn were really disappointed, and their in- 
terest began to flag from that moment. 

Nevertheless, the readings were 
started, and they were, on the whole, as 
successful as one could expect under the 
circumstances, though I think now that they 
might have gone off better if Mr. Green 
had been present. We met, of course, in 
the afternoon and had tea, and sometimes 
the tea and talk lasted so long that the read- 
ings were cut short. It often happened, 
moreover, that when we were well under 
way, conversation of a purely personal na- 
ture was apt to bubble up in the midst of 
the most thrilling passages, for I have no- 
ticed that, however anxious people may 
seem to improve themselves and to wel- 
come a literary meeting as a means of cul- 
ture, they are never particularly anxious 
3 27 


tICtie of €t>tnvtsit 


to stick to the subject in hand, but eagerly 
seize every opportunity of introducing a 
personal element. 

I remember the time when we read Bo- 
rneo and Juliet. It was most embarrassing. 
We had had a little difficulty at the pre- 
vious meeting, for when it had been ar- 
ranged that Miss Green should read Borneo 
and I Juliet, the other ladies insisted that 
it would not be necessary for them^to at- 
tend. After a good deal of persuasion, 
however, they all came, though it would be 
stretching a point to say they attended. 
Mrs. Welwyn, who read the part of the 
nurse, was furtively cutting her copy of the 
play with a hair-pin, and from the curious 
slips she made, it was evident that it was 
the first time she had looked at the part. 
Miss Green had, of course, studied hers and 
read it very well until she came to — 

Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear, 

That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops — ” 

when somehow I failed to respond as 
promptly as I should have done — 

“ O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon 
That monthly changes in her circled orb,” 

28 


ai JLaDie0’ g)tiake0peare 


and we all heard Mrs. Manners and Mrs. 
Welwyn, who sat together at one end of the 
table, lamenting, the one the size of her 
family, the other the difference of sex in 
hers, which precluded the proper passing 
on of garments from one to the other, and 
left her, as she said, with good boots on her 
hands ! 

I could not help smiling, having a fel- 
low-feeling for Mrs. Welwyn, and, like her, 
two children of opposite sexes. But Miss 
Green, I am sorry to say, completely lost 
her temper and spoke very sharply to them 
both, while for the rest of the play she read 
as though she had taken a particular dis- 
like to Juliet, so that I exclaimed — 

“ 0 Romeo, Romeo ! Wherefore art thou Romeo? ” 

more than once in the wrong place. 

Another time, when we read Hamlet, 
there was a long discussion over the pas- 
sage — 

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral bak’d meats 

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables,” 

some of US being of opinion that the pas- 
sage should be taken in its literal sense, 
and Hamlet^s mother credited with the vir- 
29 


of (ll;tienrtoe 


tue of careful housewifery, others holding 
that Hamlet^s madness first shows itself in 
these words, and refusing to admit that the 
queen had even that much virtue. 

“ Talking of thrift,’’ said Mrs. Peacock, 
it is perfectly shocking what waste goes 
on in ordinary households! Do you know 
my cook saw almost a whole leg of mutton 
in Mrs. Smith’s dust-bin? A whole leg! 
Only just a slice out of the middle ! I would 
never permit such things to go on in my 
house, not if I were a millionaire ! ” 

^‘What was your cook doing in Mrs. 
Smith’s dust-bin? ” said Mrs. Welwyn. 

“ Looking for a silver spoon,” Mrs. Pea- 
cock answered mysteriously. 

Miss Green frowned and moved impa- 
tiently. 

‘^Perhaps, after all,” said Mrs. Man- 
ners thoughtfully, leading the subject gen- 
tly back to the play, ^4t may be better 
to be a little bit extravagant than to be 
as thrifty as Hamlet’s mother and marry 
your deceased husband’s brother as she 
did.” 

When he was not even deceased,” put 
in Mrs. Peacock; and when we laughed she 
30 


2i ilauieflf' 


added, In any case, he did not act as 
though he were.’’ 

Naturally enough at this point the dis- 
cussion turned on the Deceased Wife’s Sis- 
ter Bill, and the vexed question as to 
whether or not it will make marriage with 
a deceased husband’s brother legal. 

There has never been any question 
about it, I believe, but women, as a rule, re- 
fuse to admit that one does not imply the 
other, and in any case public opinion in our 
neighbourhood is strongly in favour of 
things as they are. 

“ I think,” said Miss Green severely at 
last, “ that we had better get on with the 
reading, and have a special meeting to dis- 
cuss all these interesting questions.” 

We sighed, and returned reluctantly to 
the play, but we never got beyond the third 
act. The reading, as a reading, was hardly 
a success, whereas the play as a subject of 
discussion might have proved really inter- 
esting. 

We had, moreover, serious differences 
of opinion as to what should or should not 
be omitted in reading the plays aloud. 
Miss Green said that we were all ladies, 
31 




and there was no need to omit anything. 
Mrs. Peacock said that the very fact of our 
being ladies made it necessary to leave out 
some things. If we had been men or angels 
the case might have been ditf erent ! And so 
we came to no proper understanding, and 
we did as we thought fit at the moment, 
omitting or substituting as the fancy took 
us. Mrs. Welwyn, for instance, could 
never bring herself to say damn,” what- 
ever happened, and she put in dashes ” 
and Oh my^s ” instead. In reading Lady 
Macbeth she rather weakly substituted 
^^Out, little spot,” for ‘‘Out, damned spot! ” 
and of course we all laughed. On other oc- 
casions she simply omitted the “word of 
sin ” and the metre suffered. 

Mrs. Peacock is much bolder as regards 
words, but when she has plunged right into 
the midst of a doubtful passage she is apt 
to grow suddenly self-conscious, and begin 
to stammer, and then, as a rule, she stops 
dead and says “ etcetera,” so that the next 
person is at a loss to know where to go on, 
and as often as not the thread is lost and we 
have to pass on to the next scene. 

Notwithstanding such trifling draw- 
32 


31 !LaUte0’ ^^lafeesfpeare &ociet^ 


backs, I, for one, am really grateful to 
Miss Green for the spirit sli6 has shown 
in starting and carrying through these 
readings. I should certainly never have 
thought of reading Shakespeare otherwise, 
and now I read little else. I have dropped 
my subscription to the circulating library, 
because I find the tragedies so much more 
bracing than the last new novel, in which 
the sentiments are carefully boiled down 
to suit chaste women, and insinuation takes 
the place of healthy expression of feeling. 
And I am recommending all my friends 
when worried by domestic cares — ^when the 
butcher sends tough meat, and the laun- 
dress tears the sheets, and the money is not 
forthcoming to pay the weekly bills — to sit 
down calmly and read one of the tragedies, 
and I promise them that when they come 
back to their petty cares they will find they 
have assumed quite other proportions, and 
are not the mountains of woe that they ap- 
peared before. 

Miss Green talks now of starting 
Browning readings next winter, as we may 
be said to have “ done ” Shakespeare, and of 
getting the men to come, but I know that 
33 


turtle of (il;lifnri0e 


Howard detests Browning, and Dr. Pea- 
cock would always have an important pa- 
tient to attend if he found the meetings at 
all dull. Mr. Welwyn is a literary light in 
his own line, but I am afraid he would be 
altogether too serious for us ; and Mr. Man- 
ners (though he is fond of poetry, and re- 
cites with a great deal of spirit) has seven 
children and a tendency to rheumatism, 
and I do not think much can he expected 
of him ; while Mr. Green’s tastes lie more in 
the direction of tennis, afternoon teas, and 
croquet than of the poets. His sister does 
her best to keep him up to the mark. She 
writes his sermons for him, and she tries 
to keep him from entanglements with his 
numerous lady friends, but I do not think 
she will ever succeed in making him a stu- 
dent of Browning. He will, of course, mar- 
ry one of these days, in spite of all her 
efforts, and then, though I am by no means 
a matchmaker, I have set my heart on her 
marrying a bishop. I keep wishing that 
my circle of acquaintances included more 
dignitaries of the Church, so that I might 
have the pleasure of introducing them to 
her. Howard says there is not, and never 
34 


a flauieg" ^l^akesfpeare S)octetp 


has been, such a thing as a single bishop, 
though he has an idea that they are fre- 
quently widowers, and he has promised to 
look out for one for me. 

However, if she marries an ordinary 
clergyman, she will no doubt make a bishop 
of him in a very short time,” I remarked 
to Howard as we sat together after dinner 
a night or so ago. “ You should have heard 
the masterly manner in which she defended 
the missionary spirit against my attacks 
when we were discussing The Tempest the 
other day.” 

I am thankful I didn’t,” he returned. 

“ She really ought to he grateful to me,” 
I went on, because I am the only woman 
who ever opposes her in argument (I can- 
not even rely on Mrs. Peacock to stand up 
to her) ; and it is so had for a person to 
he always laying down the law — in the pul- 
pit and out of it — ^with no one to contra- 
dict.” 

Howard laughed. 

The Tempest might afford a good field 
for discussion.” 

“ I assure you it did,” I answered. It 
almost broke up the society. Miss Green 
35 


of dDocnrioe 


defended Prospero and the missionary 
spirit. I stood up for Caliban, the lawful 
owner of the island, and contended that he 
was a really interesting and original char- 
acter ruined by a mistaken zeal for civiliza- 
tion and education. I amazed her by refer- 
ring to Ferdinand and Miranda as love- 
sick puppets, and classing Trinculo and 
Stephano with Prospero, who, like modern 
explorers, introduce sophisticated vices 
to innocent islanders. Miss Green waxed 
extraordinarily eloquent in reply. You 
should have heard her I In the end her dis- 
course turned on the Temperance question 
and we had to listen to a long harangue.” 

Couldn’t you stop her! ” asked How- 
ard in a suspiciously sleepy voice. 

I know better than to try to stop any 
one who begins on the Temperance ques- 
tion,” I said. “ By-the-bye, Miss Green is 
hoping that our new neighbour will prove 
a supporter of hers in that line. But judg- 
ing from the decoration of the drawing- 
room in there ” — I waved my hand in the 
direction of “ The Glen “ I do not ex- 
pect her to go in for Temperance or Wom- 
an’s Eights, or anything of that sort.” 

36 


21 ILaOies' ^tjafee^peare 


How childish you are I ” Howard said. 

What do you think Mrs. Greenlaw will 
he like ? ” I asked, taking no notice of his 
last remark. 

“ I hope she will he like Mrs. Welwyn,’^ 
he said sleepily. 

“ You may go to sleep if you like,” I re- 
marked impatiently, taking up a hook. “ A 
tortoise would he as interesting to talk to 
as you are! I wonder whether there is a 
word which would apply to husbands in the 
evenings, in the same way as hibernating 
applies to certain animals in winter. One 
might say, I think, that husbands vesper- 
natedy if one were writing their natural his- 
tory.” 

Something uncommonly like a snore 
was Howard’s only response. 


37 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE curate’s bees 

“The Bee is but small amongst the foules, yet doth 
her fruit passe in sweetenesse.” — Ecclesiasticus. 

Some little time ago I had a great desire 
to keep bees, and I tried hard to persuade 
Howard that Edenrise was a particularly 
favourable place for their cultivation, and 
that our garden was peculiarly suitable for 
the purpose. But (as husbands will) he 
persistently discouraged me. He said that 
I had no time to attend to bees; that the 
children would be stung if we kept them; 
that bees are subject to all kinds of mys- 
terious diseases ; that they are devoured by 
all sorts of unexpected vermin. And be- 
sides,” he always added, to clinch the mat- 
ter, I hate moral insects ! ” 

It goes without saying that these argu- 
ments did not seriously damp my ardour, 
and the curate (who continually boasts of 
38 


Curate’0 llBeeci 


the sums that he makes by the sale of his 
honey) having undertaken to instruct me in 
the art of bee-keeping, I spent some little 
time in investigating the interior of his 
hives with him and in watching him manip- 
ulate the bees. It all seemed so simple and 
fascinating that I was quite determined to 
try my hand, and I had begun to save the 
money for the necessary outlay in hives, 
bees, and apparatus, when one hot day last 
summer I paid an unfortunate call upon 
Miss Green and had my faith in the docility 
of bees rudely shaken. 

A hot east wind was blowing — the sort 
of wind that atfects the temper of the most 
serene of human beings, and apparently it 
has an equally evil effect on the moral tone 
of the bee. 

I felt hot and cross when I arrived at 
Miss Green’s, and I sat down in her little 
study to wait, for the servant said she was 
in the garden and would be with me in a 
moment. I fanned myself with my hand- 
kerchief as I looked out of the French 
window upon the parched grass-plot and 
thirsting flowers, their heads drooping dis- 
mally in the blazing sun. Suddenly I saw 
89 


l^ousfefcDibes! of (Eoenrifi^e 


Miss Green dart out from behind some 
bushes at the end of the little garden, and 
approach the house in an extraordinarily 
undignified manner. She was attired in 
the green veil and the thick gloves of the 
bee-keeper, and I was soon aware that her 
unusual animation was caused by a swarm 
of bees which was relentlessly pursuing 
her along the garden path. Her pace in- 
creased as she neared the house, and when 
she reached the window she almost hurled 
herself through it into the room, banging 
the glass doors behind her with all the force 
of which she was capable. The bees, how- 
ever, were too quick for her, and in a mo- 
ment the room seemed filled with the noise 
of their angry buzzing. (A noise which I 
still hear in quiet moments when I begin to 
feel the desire to keep bees reviving within 
me!) 

“ They will calm down in a moment. It 
is the heat — only the heat — and the bel- 
lows, which wouldnT act ! ” said Miss Green 
in excited tones. “Do keep calm, quite 
calm ! It is only the heat ! ” 

She began to dance about as she spoke, 
for one or two of the bees had managed to 
40 


tCtie Curate’0 Wtt& 


get inside her veil and I heard their angry 
note change to one of deep satisfaction as 
they fastened upon her, freely sacrificing 
their lives in their thirst for revenge. 

There was no need to tell me to keep 
calm — I was quite calm — until I suddenly 
felt a sharp sting on my own hand, and 
then I turned and fled almost without a 
word, leaving Miss Green to wrestle alone, 
and to get rid of the bees as best she 
could. 

For several days after this unfortunate 
visit I was obliged to wear my arm in a 
sling, and Miss Green did not get oft so 
easily as that. She was almost unrecognis- 
able, and did not venture out for the best 
part of a week. 

Her brother, who came to inquire for 
me, and to explain the conduct of his moral 
insects, told me that I could not have had 
a better lesson in the manner of how not to 
manage bees. That it was madness to at- 
tempt to take the honey in such weather. 
That perfect calmness and coolness are of 
the first importance in their treatment, and 
that if you cannot impress a bee with your 
moral superiority, it is useless to attempt 
41 


turtle f^oueieij)t\)e£i of (EOenrtoe 


to manage a hive. His sister, he said, had 
signally failed in this respect, and he con- 
sidered the conduct of his bees perfectly 
justifiable. 

I glanced at my arm, which hardly 
looked like a human limb. I seemed to 
hear again the vindictive buzzing of the in- 
sects in Miss Green’s little study, and my 
desire to interfere with such excitable crea- 
tures completely faded. 

“ I think that bees require a masculine 
firmness in their treatment, which neither 
Miss Green nor I possess,” I said. 

Mr. Green agreed with me, and his sis- 
ter so far fell in with this view of the mat- 
ter that she has left the practical manage- 
ment of the hives entirely to him since that 
day, and has contented herself with mak- 
ing an exhaustive study of the manners and 
customs of bees, beginning with the Fourth 
Georgic and ending with Maeterlinck’s Vie 
des Abeilles. 

She has been very much interested and 
absorbed in the study during the whole win- 
ter, and no doubt she pointed out to Mr. 
Green how naturally the subject lends it- 
self to religious treatment, and most likely 
42 


®tie €ntntt^& 


it was she who wrote the sermon which he 
preached yesterday morning. 

He took for his text, Go to the ant, 
thou sluggard; consider her ways and be 
wise.” And when he had very briefly con- 
sidered the ways of the ant, he passed on to 
consider the ways of the bee much more in 
detail, enlarging on the internal economy 
of the hive, and drawing an obvious paral- 
lel between Providence and the bee-keeper. 

I was very much interested myself, hut 
I do not think the sermon was properly 
appreciated by the bulk of the congrega- 
tion. It was considered an innovation. 
Some rude little boys were even heard to 
buzz when Mr. Green came out of church, 
and Howard^s Aunt Jane expressed her- 
self on the subject in a very decided man- 
ner as I walked home with her after the 
service. 

“ I don’t approve of it,” she said, jerk- 
ing her head to emphasize her words. “ An 
essay on the bee instead of a sermon with 
good sound doctrine, such as we have a 
right to expect. It won’t do, my dear ! It 
won’t do ! What do you think, John! ” she 
asked suddenly, turning to her husband, 
4 43 


of CBDenrtoe 


who was walking half a pace behind ns, car- 
rying a large prayer-book in his hand. 

I thought it very interesting, my 
dear,” he said, with a deprecating smile. 

It may be interesting. I did not say 
that it was not interesting. What I ask is, 
Is it suitable from the pulpit? I doubt 
it, and I regret to see the modern prying 
spirit, turning outside what Providence has 
placed inside, showing itself even in the 
church ! ” 

If I were a bee,” I said, laughing, “ I 
am sure I should resent having my private 
affairs made public property in such a 
manner.” 

Aunt Jane’s eyes twinkled. 

And besides,” she said, there is no 
real parallel between bees and men; they 
are guided by blind instinct, unconscious of 
right and wrong, whereas we act con- 
sciously on moral principles.” 

Oh ! ” I began, but I stopped, knowing 
that I was unequal to arguing yrith Aunt 
Jane on such a subject, and I turned the 
conversation, clumsily, but successfully as 
it happened, by an inquiry concerning her 
new spring bonnet. 

44 


€urate’0 Wtt& 


Easter will soon be here, and on Easter 
Sundays Aunt Jane always appears at 
church in a new bonnet, which causes her 
long and earnest thought for weeks before. 
The number of unseasonable birds, fruits, 
and flowers she manages to arrange on its 
surface is always a source of wonder and 
admiration to me and of the highest satis- 
faction to herself. But Aunt Jane acts on 
moral principles, and so when she wears 
her new bonnet for the first time she puts 
on a new pair of shoes, which pinch her 
toes and prevent her mind from dwelling 
too exclusively on her head-gear ! 

All through the service she sings loudly 
in what she calls a natural alto ” — a part 
entirely of her own invention — and only 
this morning I saw Mr. Green, who is de- 
cidedly musical, turn and look at her in a 
manner which would have covered an ordi- 
nary person with confusion, but Aunt J ane 
did not display a sign of self-consciousness. 

Poor Aunt Jane ! It is refreshing to see 
what pleasure she still derives from trifles. 
The energy she throws into them is won- 
derful considering that her life has been an 
unceasing struggle against poverty and 
45 


of dEOenrtoe 


misfortune. I am afraid to say how many 
children she has borne and buried, but I 
know that she has only one consumptive 
son living now, whom she and Uncle John 
stint themselves in every possible way to 
keep in comfort somewhere in South 
Africa. 

Howard has a particular affection for 
Aunt Jane, but Uncle John is quite unable 
to cope with her vigorous and determined 
mind, and when he is worried in any way 
he shuts himself up in his own room with 
the Vicar of Wakefield, and he seldom 
emerges until he has read it through, 
though I am sure he must have had it by 
heart years ago, poor man! His wife in- 
sists on the substitution of Bunyan’s Holy 
War on Sundays. 

When I had thoroughly discussed the 
question of the new bonnet with Aunt Jane, 
and we had decided that ostrich plumes, 
bunches of grapes, and butterfiies should 
form a part of its decoration, we were al- 
most at the door of our house, and as we 
passed “ The Glen,” which is the house next 
ours nearer the church and the village, we 
saw a lady and gentleman come out at the 
46 


®t)e Curate's? llBees? 


gate. The lady had red-gold hair and a 
very elegant figure which was set off to 
advantage by a well-cut costume of pale 
gray. 

“ Your new neighbour,” said Aunt Jane 
in a loud aside. But I thought she was a 
widow. Who is the gentleman ? ” 

Some relation, I suppose,” I said. 
And as we turned in at our own garden- 
gate I took the opportunity of a good look 
at the backs of the two figures retreating 
in the direction of the railway station. 

“ She knows how to dress,” said Aunt 
Jane admiringly. I am so glad on your 
account the house is taken. I never could 
bear an empty house next door to me, with 
an untidy garden and everything going to 
rack and ruin.” 

Dick and Amabelle will he sorry,” I 
said rather sadly, “for there is nothing 
they enjoy so much as squeezing through 
the hedge to play in the empty garden.” 

“ You must put barbed wire in the gaps 
to prevent it now,” said Aunt Jane in her 
most decided manner. 

“ Think of their clothes ! ” I said as I 
took leave of her. 


47 


®t)e j^ous^etoities; of (Eontrioe 


I found Howard sitting by the fire read- 
ing, as I bad left him. 

“ You ought to have been at church; we 
had a sermon all about bees,” I said, put- 
ting my hands over his book. 

Then I am glad I wasn’t there ; I hate 
moral insects,” he said cheerfully. 

Miss Green must have written the ser- 
mon,” I went on, but she did not say the 
interesting things she said to me the other 
day — or perhaps her brother left them out 
as unsuitable.” 

“ What interesting things ? ” asked 
Howard. 

Oh, only that she looks forward to the 
time when human affairs will be managed 
on the same system as the bee has adopted ! 
When the work of the world will be done by 
sexless workers, untroubled by the cares of 
family life, and the business of continuing 
the race will be relegated to the background 
and carried out by specialized individuals.” 

I don’t believe Miss Green told you 
that,” Howard said incredulously. “But 
it would be an excellent subject for discus- 
sion at your Shakespeare meetings.” (It is 
one of Howard’s favourite jokes that we 
48 


Cujcate'flf llBeesf 


do not read Shakespeare when we meet for 
that purpose, hut discuss things in gen- 
eral.) “ Have you discussed it yet? ” 

“ Well, no, I am afraid it would lead us 
too far,” I said in a superior tone. When 
we meet to read, we read ; and besides, Mrs. 
Peacock is like you, she has a violent prej- 
udice against the bee.” 

“ Sensible woman ! ” said Howard. 
“Mrs. Manners is very well content 
with the present order of things,” I went 
on. “ She is not in the least open to the 
discussion of new schemes, and I don’t 
quite know about Mrs. Welwyn.” 

“ And what do you think? ” 

“I? Oh, I agree with Aunt Jane that 
what Providence has mercifully placed in- 
side we have no right to turn outside, and 
the inner life of the bee is no concern of 
mine ! Besides, bees sting horribly when 
they are interfered with,” I added, laugh- 
ing. 

“ I am glad you have come round to my 
point of view,” said Howard approvingly. 
“If I were a naturalist I would rather 
study anything— jelly-fish even, than the 
bee.” 


49 




I believe a jelly-fisb to be much more 
capable of independent action, less vindic- 
tive, and not nearly so grasping,” I said; 
‘‘ but, on the whole, I am sure I should find 
the snail more interesting. There is a 
great deal to be said for the snail, but natu- 
ralists are so dreadfully prejudiced in fa- 
vour of some animals and so very unfair to 
others! And now I come to think of it, 
naturalists are almost always me/i.” 


50 


CHAPTER V 

MES. WELWYN’S MATEIMONIAL TROUBLES 

“ And no man that imparteth his Griefes to his Friend, 
but hee grieveth the lesse.” — Bacon. 


Every one likes Mrs. Manners, and her 
husband and seven children simply adore 
her. She is not exactly beantifn], and she 
has not Mrs. Peacock^s social qualities, nor 
does she make learned quotations like Miss 
Green, but she looks at you with her clear 
eyes and you feel that she understands and 
that you can trust her. A perfectly truth- 
ful, unatfected woman is rare anywhere, 
and I am sure Mrs. Manners would be ap- 
preciated and confided in wherever she 
lived. At Edenrise we all go to her for ad- 
vice and sympathy in domestic difficulties ; 
her servants tell her about their love-af- 
fairs, and the curate pours out his heart to 
her, while Miss Green, I believe, advises 
her how to advise him. I have often won- 
51 


of (EDenrtoe 


dered whether Mrs. Welwyn goes so far as 
to confide her matrimonial troubles to her, 
for troubles she certainly has, and she must 
have some difficulty in keeping them to her- 
self. 

She is pretty and a little bit affected, 
very timid, and, I think, inclined to be hys- 
terical, because she cannot understand her 
husband’s point of view, and because he 
does not give her the admiration which he 
gave spontaneously in their first year of 
marriage. In any case they seem to me to 
drift farther and farther apart. I am 
sorry for the poor little woman, and am 
ready to believe, with Howard, who is an- 
gry that her husband neglects her, that 
there is something in her which might have 
been brought out under more favourable 
circumstances. At the same time I can’t 
help liking Mr. Welwyn. I admire his 
vigour of mind and body, and I like his 
name — Julius — it seems to me so appro- 
priate. He is a professor at the University 
College, Bond Street, keenly interested in 
his work and in the book which he is writ- 
ing, and often away collecting material for 
it. When we all meet I talk to him, or lis- 
52 


tKrouble^ 


ten with interest, while Howard talks to 
Mrs. Welwyn, and I wonder all the time 
what he can find to talk to her about, for if 
she comes to tea with me alone, I rack my 
brains in vain for a suitable topic of con- 
versation. 

I have a way of running through the al- 
phabet in search of a subject: A — an- 
tiquity, animosity, arrogance — nothing be- 
ginning with A seems suitable. Try B — B 
appears to be more promising, and I start 
with Babies, but mothers invariably ditfer 
on the treatment of infants, and so I hurry 
on to Beetles, and then there is the Butcher 
— fortunately the butcher is always with us, 
and his villainies are a fruitful source of 
discussion in Edenrise. After that I try 
G, D, E, with inditferent results, and all the 
while I am aware that I have a preoccupied 
air, and my efforts to shake it off are quite 
unavailing. But really, it is very difficult 
for an ordinary person to be polite and 
entertaining when she is not interested — 
is, in fact, bored to death — and women are 
so reserved that they rarely or never speak 
of what they feel seriously about. They 
smile and talk of the weather and the last 
63 


l^ousfetDibefi? of (Eoenrioe 


novel they have read, when the facts and 
difficulties of their own lives are weighing 
upon them, and you know it, and they know 
that you know it and would he glad to help 
them with your sympathy, hut still they 
smile and talk about the weather. 

Strangely enough, Mrs. Welwyn, when 
she came in this afternoon, threw down 
these harriers of reserve, and for the first 
time since I have known her began to talk 
spontaneously to me of a matter that really 
affected her seriously. 

“I do not know if I ought to talk to 
you — or to any one,” she began, ner- 
vously twisting the gloves she held in 
her hands, hut I feel I must talk to some- 
body.” 

“ You are unhappy. I wish I could help 
you. What is it? ” I asked. 

Tears came into her eyes. “You are 
so sympathetic ! ” she said. 

And then there was an awkward pause, 
during which she was evidently trying to 
make up her mind what to say and how to 
say it. At last she hurst out : 

“ Do you know that — that I don’t think 
I can go on living with Julius any more. It 
64 


£pr0^ Wtonhltsi 


is all so — so dreadfully difficult, and I am 
so unhappy ! ” 

<< Why ? I asked, taking her hand in 
mine. Don’t you love him? ” 

“ I don’t know,” she answered, turning 
her head away. ‘‘ I admire him, hut I could 
not — I cannot give him the sort of love he 
wants — and — and — Oh, I wonder if you 
can understand,” she broke off, ‘‘ or if I am 
the only woman who ever felt like this ! ” 

“ I don’t understand yet,” I said as gen- 
tly as I could. 

“ I will tell you — everything,” she said. 

She began with the utmost difficulty, 
speaking in short, jerky sentences, and 
from time to time I helped her on with a 
word or a question until at last she had told 
me all her trouble. 

“When I was married,” she said, “I 
didn’t know anything. I thought I loved 
Julius — I admired him so much, I thought 
him so splendid. I liked him to love me — 
I was a silly, spoiled child ; and then — then, 
you know, marriage and everything was so 
different from what I expected. It was a 
shock to me. I couldn’t understand Juli- 
us’s feelings and I couldn’t respond to them. 

55 


of C^Denrtoe 


I tried to, but it was no good. He wanted 
something that I couldn’t give. And if I 
was natural and atfectionate to him in my 
own way he was always wanting something 
more. It worried me. It was always going 
on, and I showed him too plainly what I 
felt, I suppose, and he was hurt with me — 
and I was hurt with him — I thought he 
ought to understand me when he knew so 
much.” 

She looked at me with her eyes brim- 
ming over with tears to see if I was able to 
follow her. 

Couldn’t you explain yourself! 
Couldn’t you talk things out with him!” 
was all I could say. 

How could I ! It was quite impossible. 
He could never understand; I soon saw 
that. I am not blaming him ; I do not see 
how a man could possibly understand a 
woman like me.” 

^'Oh, my dear, it can’t be so bad as 
that!” I said. 

‘‘I think it is,” she said hopelessly. 
“You can’t explain some things to some 
people ; you can only feel them ” 

“ Try to explain,” I said. 

56 


^eltD^n"0 Wtonhlt^ 


She shook her head. 

I can explain them to you because you 
do feel them.” 

I shook my head in my turn. 

“ Oh, yes, you do ! ” she said quick- 
ly, and then she went on again, jerking 
out her words with the same effort as be- 
fore. 

“ Then, you know, the babies came. I 
was frightened, and Julius was very pa- 
tient with me. But I know that he thought 
things would he different after they were 
born. They were not a hit different, except, 
of course, I had the children. It was not a 
bit better. I think I wanted to be let alone 
more than ever. And — and one day I told 
him so, and we quarrelled hopelessly. I 
suppose I told him so at the wrong moment 
and in the wrong way. He was dreadfully 
angry.” 

Her head dropped on my shoulder and 
she sobbed. 

I smoothed the hand that I held in mine 
and tried to encourage her to unburden 
herself. It was pathetic to me to see her 
struggling with her emotion and striving 
to find words to express her feelings about 
67 


turtle i^ou£ieix)ibeei of Ctirnrts?e 


one of the most difficult matters that wom- 
en have to deal with. 

“ He was so angry that I was fright- 
ened/^ she went on. “ I did not know he 
would feel like that. How could I know? 
I cannot forget the look on his face ” (she 
shuddered). “ He went away, right out of 
the house. He said — he said — he would 
never try to force my feelings. If I did 
not love him he did not want me, he 
could do without me. And so he does — 
ever since.” 

“ Has this been going on long? ” I asked. 

“Yes, a long time. He lets me alone, 
and of course I know that he goes to see 
another woman in London. I daresay you 
know it, and perhaps every one in Edenrise 
knows it.” She lifted her head and spoke 
with some heat. “ Mrs. Peacock knows it, 
and her sympathy makes me sick. I hate 
it! I don’t want to be treated as a neg- 
lected wife. And Julius treats me like a 
strange child ! ” she ended a little fret- 
fully. 

“Have you honestly tried to look at 
things from his point of view? Surely you 
can do something,” I said. 

58 


®roubleflf 


“I think I have tried — I don’t know. 
Perhaps I am just beginning. Why are 
things so difficult, and why are girls so ig- 
norant? ” 

“ Why are they? ” I echoed. It isn’t 
fair that they should know absolutely noth- 
ing about these things until they are mar- 
ried ” 

‘‘And it is too late,” Mrs. Welwyn 
put in. 

“ I hope we shall be able to do better 
for our children,” I said, my motherly feel- 
ings getting the upper hand for the mo- 
ment. 

“ I can’t bear to think of that,” she said, 
with a little sort of shiver. “ It is so dif- 
ficult to bring up children. I shall never 
know what to tell them, or what not to tell 
them, and I have never dared to talk to any 
one myself about these things — never ! My 
mother wouldn’t talk to me, or I couldn’t 
talk to her. I look round on other married 
people and wonder — ^wonder all the time 
how they really feel towards one another — 
if they are happy together, or if they are 
only keeping up appearances before the 
world.” 


5 


59 


of CBornrtor 


“ I often wonder too,” I said. 

“ But you are happy? ” she asked a little 
anxiously. 

Yes, but Howard is so sympathetic,” I 
said. We understand one another. 

“It’s you who are sympathetic, and I 
want you to tell me what to do,” Mrs. Wel- 
wyn continued. “I really want your ad- 
vice. I can’t decide on anything, but I keep 
thinking that Julius ought to be free, to 
live with some one else altogether if he 
wants to. But what can I do? There are 
the children. And then I know that Julius 
will only laugh at me if I suggest such a 
thing to him.” 

“Don’t be hasty about that,” I said 
quickly. “ Think it over. Things will come 
right yet with a little patience.” 

“I can’t think it,” she said wearily. 
“Julius hasn’t any patience with me. I 
know I have been dreadfully foolish, but I 
couldn’t help it. And I cannot do anything 
now, unless I can set him free, because my 
feelings are just the same — I think they are 
— only I begin to feel — I don’t know what 
I feel — but I know that I don’t like people 
to talk about J ulius as they do and treat me 
60 


tCroublesf 


as though he neglected me. It is degrad- 
ing.’^ 

My heart went out to her. Her conven- 
tional bringing up and the knowledge she 
had acquired, since her marriage, of the su- 
periority of her own sex in the virtue of 
chastity, has served only to humble her, 
and such ideas as she has on the subject 
she has arrived at quite unaided. 

“ Our so-called virtue is in our blood 
and is no more a merit than our complex- 
ions,” I said, though I do not think she fol- 
lowed my line of argument. 

She sighed, and I began to beg her to 
go to her husband, to force her feelings a 
little if necessary. At any rate, to insist on 
having it out with him. 

“ You must begin,” I said. “ You can- 
not go on like this.” 

“ I cannot, oh, I cannot ! ” she said in 
evident distress. You don’t know how im- 
possible it is ! ” 

“If I had quarrelled with Howard in 
such a way — ” I began. 

“ Could you? Would it be possible? ” 
she asked eagerly. 

“ I can conceive of such a thing. And if 
61 


i^ouj0ictoibe0 of dEOenrtor 


I had/^ I went on, perhaps not quite truth- 
fully, “ I should go to him and make him 
make it up. I would excuse him in every 
way and freely own myself in the wrong.” 

' I stopped, for Mrs. Welwyn is so sensi- 
tive that she began to shrink away from 
me — she could not consider such a course. 
She was much too timid to make advances, 
and I had to assure her again and again 
that my attitude towards her was not an 
unsympathetic one, and that she had not 
done wrong in confiding her troubles to me. 

It has done me so much good to talk 
to you,” she said. 

And before I had time to reply Mrs. 
Manners came in. 

Mrs. Welwyn pressed her tearful face 
to mine and left without another word. 

“ Mrs. Welwyn was just asking me the 
recipe for a pudding,” I said casually when 
I had closed the door upon her. 

Mrs. Manners looked straight into my 
eyes and said : 

‘‘ Poor little woman ! I know she has 
her troubles, and I believe she confides in 
you. I hope you advise her well.” 

I think I do,” I said rather hesitating- 
62 


troubles; 


ly ; and then I added with conviction, 
Yes, I assure you, my dear, that that pud- 
ding could not hurt a fly.” 

I was so glad it was Mrs. Manners and 
no one else who came just then, for any 
other lady would have questioned me ex- 
haustively, and I find it so hard to tell a 
lie that I should have bungled and roused 
further suspicions. It surprised me at 
first that Mrs. Welwyn should have chosen 
me and not Mrs. Manners to confide in, but 
after all, it is only natural for her to feel 
that a woman with an adoring husband and 
seven children must be biassed in matrimo- 
nial matters. I do not myself think that 
Mrs. Manners would be capable of under- 
standing her point of view, because her 
manner of regarding things is so much 
more simple and natural. 

When Howard came home in the even- 
ing I was absent-minded, and omitted to 
answer several questions that he put to me. 
I failed to take any interest in the news of 
the day. Literary topics fell flat, and when 
he tried one or two of his stock irritants — 
subjects that he keeps in reserve on pur- 
63 


of (Eoenrtoe 


pose to rouse my anger — I was as meek as 
a lamb. 

What is it, Catherine f ” he asked with 
some concern after I had put two lumps of 
sugar into his coifee, sugar being a thing 
he detests. What has Dick been doing? 
Or is it the cook? Or has Mrs. Peacock 
been telling you anything about me ? ” 

How can you be so foolish? ” I replied 
without a smile. Such trifles have no in- 
terest at all for me. I have been thinking 
about Women, in the abstract and with a 
capital W. I cannot think of anything else 
just now.” 

Howard whistled very softly. 

“ What has set you thinking ? ” he said. 

Well, Mrs. Welwyn came to see me 
this afternoon, and it was she who put ideas 
into my head. Things trouble me.” 

Howard looked incredulous. 

Mrs. Welwyn put ideas into your 
head? ” he repeated. She couldn’t do it! 
I suppose some one has been telling her 
about Welwyn? ” 

“ She knows it,” I said shortly. 

^‘Well, I don’t pretend to understand 
the business,” he said, putting the matter 
64 


WtWxs^n^^ ®roublefl( 


in his legal way. Here is a man with a 
charming little wife, and he neglects her 
for a perfectly ordinary person. I have 
seen him with her in town. One never 
knows.” — He shrugged his shoulders. 

Men are the queerest creatures ! ” 

“ Not so queer as women,” I put in. 

I know, of course,” he went on, “ that 
Welwyn and his wife are not on a level in- 
tellectually, hut what does that matter? I 
don^t neglect you because you take no in- 
terest in politics, or in anything else that is 
interesting to an intellectual person like 
me.” 

I hardly smiled. His manner showed 
some little curiosity as he asked : 

“ Did Mrs. Welwyn complain to you of 
her husband, then? ” 

^‘No, she did not blame him,” I an- 
swered briefly. 

‘^In my opinion,” Howard said in a 
thoughtful tone, she is altogether too sen- 
sitive and refined for Welwyn, and that is 
the reason why they don^t get on.” 

Now you have got to the root of the 
matter,” I said, smiling in what I felt to be 
a very aggravating manner. ‘^But my 
65 


tE^^e i^Ott£ieiJ)ti)ess of (Eo^nrioe 


opinion is that it is quite time that women 
realized that refinement is not the only 
requisite in a wife ; that it is, in fact ” 

Howard pinched me. 

“ I know what you are going to say,” he 
remarked. 

“ I was only going to say that what one 
has most need of in married life is imagina- 
tion.” 

I have found patience and good tem- 
per indispensable ! ” he said, smiling. 

I ejaculated, throwing all the 
sarcasm of which I am capable into the 
word. But, after all, imagination is the 
essential thing — though to be a really effi- 
cient wife one would want more virtues 
than there are I As for husbands ” 

“ They monopolize the virtues,” How- 
ard put in. 

I treated the remark with the scorn it 
deserved, and he soon returned to the sub- 
ject of the Welwyns, which I had been hop- 
ing he would allow to drop. I did not in- 
tend to tell him what Mrs. Welwyn had told 
me, for I hardly knew how he would regard 
the matter, and I cherished the idea of keep- 
ing it to myself until things had come right 
66 




between them, when I would tell him all 
about it, adding triumphantly; 

“ I knew this all along/’ 

It was a pleasing idea, but somehow 
Howard is too clever for me. I seldom suc- 
ceed in concealing anything from him for 
long, and he knew as much as I did about 
the matrimonial troubles of the Welwyns 
before I realized that I was telling him. 

“ Well,” he said, I wouldn’t have be- 
lieved it! Now I understand Welwyn.” 

Don’t be hard on her. It is not all her 
fault,” I pleaded. Men don’t realize how 
girls are brought up; how they have been 
trained in ignorance for generations, 
taught to idealize love and to ignore their 
primitive instincts. The wonder is that 
any of us have any natural feelings left by 
the time we marry.” 

“ There is curiosity ; fortunately that 
will die hard,” Howard said, smiling at my 
warmth. 

I went on in the same tone ; 

“It is men who have been to blame. 
They have invented our heroines for us, 
and have set us our standard of feminine 
virtue ; and we, in our desire to please, have 
67 




lived up to it only too well. I believe we 
are still suffering from the unwholesome 
effect such heroines as Clarissa Harlowe 
had upon the minds of our grandmothers.” 

‘‘ And Mrs. Welwyn’s attitude is simply 
the result of accumulated ignorance, aggra- 
vated by false ideals,” Howard said, laugh- 
ing. 

That’s it,” I said. 

“ Well, all I can say is,” he went on more 
seriously, “ that a man with real tact and 
patience would soon have got over that! 
But, then, why did she marry him ? ” 

“Accumulated ignorance,” I said, and 
after a moment’s thought I went on. “ Mr. 
Welwyn may not have any tact or patience, 
but he did the only sensible thing to be done 
under the circumstances. He let her alone. 
And I feel sure that she is beginning now to 
see things in a different light.” 

“ What advice did you give her I I hope 
you told her some wholesome truths,” How- 
ard said. 

“ Oh, I wish she had confided in Mrs. 
Manners, or in any one but me,” I said 
wearily. “ I never think of the right thing 
to say till afterward. I haven’t got a legal 
68 


^eltD^n'0 tETroubUflf 


mind, and I am so readily influenced by an- 
other person’s point of view that I lose my 
own. I wish she had confided in Mrs. Man- 
ners. She would have been of much more 
use to her. Life is such a simple matter to 
Mrs. Manners.” 

Oh, don’t let us talk about Mrs. Man- 
ners ! ” Howard said impatiently. I 
would just as soon talk about a law of na- 
ture! She is just as invariable and not a 
bit more interesting. Her serenity aggra- 
vates me.” 

And she is the one woman of my ac- 
quaintance whom I sincerely admire,” I 
said, seizing the opportunity of disagree- 
ing with him ; “ and the reason I admire her 
is that she still seems to be in touch with 
nature, while the rest of us are mere bun- 
dles of convention, without any natural 
feelings.” 

‘^Not even curiosity?” Howard said 
satirically. 

“We may be curious about what other 
people think of us,” I said, “but when it 
comes to really serious subjects most of us 
only concern ourselves with what it is ex- 
pected of us to feel.” 

69 


tEfl^e J^ottsfetDtbes? of (Bntntiat 


‘‘Your serious subjects are your hus- 
bands and children,” Howard said with 
such an air of being pointed and clever that 
I felt obliged to snub him. 

“ You are shockingly flippant,” I re- 
marked, with a show of irritation. “ You 
never can be serious, and I am always 
thanking Heaven that Dick is like me and 
not like you.” 

“You don’t know how often I thank 
Heaven for the same reason,” he said so 
meekly that I was obliged to relent, and we 
spent the rest of the evening in the most 
amicable manner. 


70 


CHAPTER VI 


THE APPEARANCE OP THE SIREN IN 
EDENRISE 

“ The characters of great and small 

Come ready made, we can’t bespeak one ; 

Their sides are many, too, and all 
(Except ourselves) have got a weak one.” 

Locker. 

Op course we do not gossip at Edenrise, 
though we may take an intelligent interest 
in our neighbours’ affairs. For instance, 
we are amused when Mrs. Peacock’s gov- 
erness (who is Swiss and who advertised 
herself in a Geneva newspaper — “ d’un cer- 
tain age et de toute moralite ”) sets her cap 
at the village chemist, and we periodically 
deplore the rumoured advent of Mrs. Man- 
ners’ eighth child. We naturally like to 
hear little tales of the prematrimonial days 
of our respectable, God-fearing neigh- 
bours, and we are in a flutter of excitement 
when the curate is contemplating a pro- 
71 


of CEOenrtoe 


posal of marriage. But we never indulge 
in ill-natured gossip. Indeed, before Mrs. 
Greenlaw came to Edenrise there was little 
or nothing to gossip about. 

The day on which we had arranged that 
it would be suitable to call on the newcomer 
seemed long in coming, and when it at 
length arrived, and Mrs. Peacock had al- 
ready equipped herself in a new bonnet and 
a chiffon ruffle of extraordinary propor- 
tions, the envy of the neighbourhood, the 
news reached her through “ Toute Moral- 
ite ” (who had had it from the chemist) that 
Mrs. Greenlaw was not a widow at all, but 
was separated from her husband. “ A ju- 
dicious separating,” “ Toute Moralite ” re- 
ported it to be. 

This was a terrible blow for Mrs. Pea- 
cock, and she was for the moment quite at 
a loss to know how to act. Up to this time 
the domestic relations of the housewives of 
Edenrise had been beyond a doubt — no 
wives living apart from their husbands, no 
widowers or bachelors (always excepting 
the curate, whom his landlady had de- 
scribed as “most as good as a female”) 
had disturbed our equanimity. The lives 
72 


®tie ^ivtn in (EUrnrififr 


of our neighbours were, or we supposed 
them to be, an open book to us. 

Mrs. Peacock sank into a chair com- 
pletely overcome by Toute Moralite^s ” 
news, and then, feeling that some decisive 
action was necessary, she took off her chif- 
fon ruffle and came to call upon me. 

“ 0 Mrs. Howard - J ones ! ” she burst 
out as soon as she entered my drawing- 
room, “ what do you think? Mrs. Greenlaw 
is not a widow at all, but is separated from 
her husband ! And what are we to do ? Are 
we to call upon her, or are we to ignore her 
existence? The black-and-white and pale- 
gray dresses she wears quite deceived me. 
I was certain she was a widow ! ” 

‘‘ They suit her golden hair and green 
eyes remarkably well,^^ I said. “ And now 
I come to think of it, I fancy she shows very 
good taste in dressing in neutral tints. If 
she wore black we might conclude that her 
husband had left her and she was sorry 
for it ” 

^‘And if she wore bright colours we 
might think she was glad to be rid of him,” 
broke in Mrs. Peacock, taking up the idea 
in her quick way. “ But perhaps, after all, 
Y3 


®l)e of (Eoenrior 


the chemist was wrong, and she is not really 
separated from her husband.’’ 

am afraid he is right,” I said. 

Howard happens to have heard of it from 
another source.” 

You knew that all this time, and you 
never told me ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Peacock. 

I wouldn’t have believed it of you ! ” 

“ I haven’t had time to tell you,” I said 
meekly. I heard it only last night. How- 
ard said nothing until he had made sure it 
was the same Mrs. Greenlaw, and the same 
husband and everything. You know what 
a calculating, legal mind he has ! ” 

^^Well, then, I certainly shall not call 
upon her,” said Mrs. Peacock, settling her- 
self firmly in her chair. 

‘‘I shall be obliged to,” I began cau- 
tiously. “ Our gardens are only separated 
by a privet hedge with bare patches in it, 
and it will be impossible to ignore the exist- 
ence of such a near neighbour. Besides, I 
have already lent her my high steps.” 

“ How rash of you ! But has any one 
actually called upon her? ” said Mrs. Pea- 
cock. 

“ Yes, the rector and his wife. They are 
74 


^ittn in 


some distant relation of Mrs. Greenlaw’s 
I believe, and she wore ber best zebra cos- 
tume. I wonder why stout, middle-aged 
ladies are so fond of broad black and white 
stripes, and always wear them on state oc- 
casions. They don’t make them look thin ; 
it can’t be for that.” 

This created a diversion, for Mrs. Pea- 
cock is a trifle inclined to embonpoint her- 
self, deeply interested in the question of 
stripes and spots, and always ready to dis- 
cuss the matter with a friend. But, inter- 
esting as the topic was, it could not hold her 
long to-day. She returned to the charge. 

“ It is all very well for the rector and 
his wife, for they live four miles away, and 
their calling does not commit them to any- 
thing. In spite of their relationship they 
need never be on really intimate terms, but 
if we call upon her it is quite another mat- 
ter — she will be one of our circle. There is 
no way out of it. We must invite her to our 
garden parties and ^ At Homes,’ and treat 
her completely as one of us. And our circle 
has always been so select ! ” 

We had got no further than this when 
Mrs. Manners and Mrs. Welwyn dropped 
6 75 




in. We continued to discuss the momen- 
tous question. The only thing we were all 
agreed about was that if we once called 
upon Mrs. Greenlaw there could he no 
drawing back on our side — our Shakespeare 
readings, our sewing-meetings, our tea- 
parties, and singing-practices must all he 
open to her, and it was little wonder we 
hesitated when we thought of her beautiful 
figure and red hair, and reflected on the 
fact that she was living apart from her hus- 
band. 

After all, she can do us no harm,’’ said 
Mrs. Manners kindly. 

“ I am not so sure of that,” remarked 
Mrs. Peacock. 

And then, naturally enough, we began 
to talk about red hair, a subject upon which 
it seems every one has strong views. We 
were all quite unanimous in saying that it 
meant something , but as to just what it 
did mean we could not agree in the least. 
Mrs. Manners was of opinion that it indi- 
cated bad temper — she had had a house- 
maid with bright gold hair, and she had 
quarrelled so dreadfully with the cook and 
had spoken so rudely to Mr. Manners that 
76 


®l^e &ittn in €t\tntisit 


she had had to get rid of her. Mrs. Wel- 
wyn, whose hair looks auburn in some 
lights, said that golden-haired women were 
sweet-tempered and easily put upon. Mrs. 
Peacock said they were clever and often 
very designing, while I held that they were 
gloomy hut inclined to be impulsive. 

“ Absurd ! said Mrs. Peacock. I 
speak from recent experience. My last 
governess before this one was not a hit of 
a pessimist. She was an extremely lively 
and artful girl. If you only knew ! ” 

We all knew about Toute Moralite^s ” 
predecessor. Mrs. Peacock had told each 
one of us in confidence how she had been 
always in the surgery, how she had shame- 
fully neglected the children, and what an 
interest Dr. Peacock had taken in her be- 
cause she was interested in medical science ! 
It was surprising, he said, what that girl 
knew! 

“ People with red hair are designing,^^ 
persisted Mrs. Peacock. “ They are al- 
ways dreadfully designing.” 

‘‘Well,” I said, “I cannot agree with 
you. Howard^s uncle’s first wife was sim- 
ply the dullest and most melancholy person 
77 


®l)e of dEOntrtoe 


I ever knew — I am ready to admit that 
Howard^s uncle may have had something to 
do with that, still the fact remains — and her 
hair was the only bright spot about her.” 

“I said so,” said Mrs. Welwyn. She 
allowed herself to be put upon because she 
was sweet-tempered.” 

“ Absurd ! ” said Mrs. Peacock. “ I 
have never known any one with red hair 
who was not clever and designing — 
never ! ” 

“ And I have never known any one who 
was not hot-tempered,” put in Mrs. Man- 
ners. 

“I admit they may be impulsive,” I 
said, ‘^but ” 

At this point our discussion was inter- 
rupted by the arrival of Mr. and Miss 
Green, and though we were impatient at 
first at the interruption, our feelings of an- 
noyance quickly changed to those of the 
keenest interest when the curate remarked 
in his sententious manner: 

‘‘We have just been calling upon your 
new neighbour, Mrs. Howard- Jones.” 

“ A most interesting woman,” said Miss 
Green. 


78 


®l)e ^iten in €titntisit 


A distant cousin of our rector’s,” re- 
marked her brother. 

We were just talking about calling on 
her when you came in,” Mrs. Peacock said 
briskly. 

“ Her house is quite in order, and so ar- 
tistic,” said Miss Green. She takes a 
great interest in literature, too, and was 
delighted at the idea of Browning readings 
next winter.” 

I glanced at Mrs. Peacock to see how 
she bore having the matter of admitting or 
excluding the newcomer to our society 
taken out of her hands in this manner. She 
showed no sign of annoyance, and the cu- 
rate went on to remark: 

Such a cultured lady ! Quite an ac- 
quisition to our little circle. Hers must be 
a lonely life, through no fault of her own, 
I am sure.” He waved his hand. I hope 
we shall all do what we can to make her feel 
at home among us. I feel confident we 
shall.” 

He spoke as though he had just lately 
created her, and was thoroughly satisfied 
with his handiwork. 

“ I am going to call upon her this very 
79 


of CEOenrioe 


afternoon,” said Mrs. Peacock, rising with 
alacrity. 

She hurried off so eagerly that she for- 
got the chitfon ruffle which would have ren- 
dered her appearance so much more im- 
pressive to a stranger, and would have 
taken her only a very few moments to have 
fetched from her house. 

In the course of the next few days we 
all called upon Mrs. Greenlaw and, on com- 
paring notes, we discovered that she was a 
lady of many sides. Mrs. Peacock found 
her interested in the hringing-up of chil- 
dren, and particularly interested in Dr. 
Peacock’s methods. Mrs. Welwyn found 
her a ready listener when she talked about 
the village butcher, the weather, and her 
husband’s prospective book, and she was 
delighted when that well-dressed lady ad- 
mired the cut of her skirt. Mrs. Greenlaw 
readily entered into the different charac- 
teristics of Mrs. Manners’ seven children, 
and she gave her several valuable hints on 
the treatment of rheumatism. 

I was anxious to have Aunt Jane’s opin- 
ion of the newcomer, but Aunt Jane, it ap- 
pears, has not called upon her, in spite of 
80 


®l^e ^ixtn in d^Uenttsie 


the example of the clergy of the neighbour- 
hood, and in spite of the fact that Mrs. 
Greenlaw is ready to throw herself into the 
scheme for turning the curate into a vicar 
— a scheme in which Aunt Jane feels the 
kindliest interest — though she may not al- 
ways approve of Mr. Green’s sermons. 
Mrs. Greenlaw has already suggested vari- 
ous ingenious ways of making money at 
bazaars, and we intend inviting her to a 
meeting to discuss the matter in a friendly 
way before long. 

She quickly discovered the interest 
which I take in gardening, and began to ask 
my advice about her flower-beds and the 
best method of dealing with the bare places 
in the privet hedge. And to Dick and Ama- 
belle she has been really charming, allow- 
ing them to pick her flowers and knock 
about her croquet-balls to their heart’s con- 
tent. 

Howard seems much amused, for some 
reason, at the whole affair, and when he 
comes home in the evenings, one of his first 
inquiries is usually : 

“ Well, and how goes it with the curate 
and the siren ^ ” 


81 




The curate,” I said this evening, has 
gone away for a few days to visit a maiden 
aunt. The siren, as you call her, is not at 
all well, and has called in Dr. Peacock.” 

Howard whistled. 

‘‘ How can you say such things ! ” I ex- 
claimed, and I left him to go and see the 
children, who were in bed, each of them 
firmly clasping an India-rubber animal 
given them by Mrs. Greenlaw. 

When I came down again I said : 

“You have never told me what Mr. 
Greenlaw is like. I want to know.” 

“ Oh, I believe he is not much to look at 
— past middle age, stoutish, bald, a good, 
solid, respectable sort of chap I ” 

“ Not much imagination or sense of hu- 
mour, I suppose ? ” I remarked. 

“ Well, no, from what I have heard you 
could hardly accuse him of that ! ” Howard 
said, laughing. 

“ Whatever made him marry Mrs. 
Greenlaw ? ” I asked. 

“ I don’t know. I daresay he thought 
that she would look well at the head of his 
table, and entertain his friends with her 
superior liveliness. But as far as I can 
82 


®l)e ^ittn in 


gather she and her particular friends 
proved a good deal too lively for Greenlaw 
and his circle. Evidently they did not hit 
it off. I fancy his imagination lies some- 
where under his waistcoat, and where hers 
is I am not prepared to say.” 

I laughed. 

She has money of her own, and they 
separated by mutual agreement, I am told,” 
he added. 

Whatever made her marry Mw! ” I 
asked. 

“ Oh, that is beyond me ! ” Howard said 
carelessly. Why does any one marry any 
one? Why did God make men male and 
female? ” 

I wish he hadn^t,” I said gloomily. 

“ You would not have liked a world of 
women only, would you, Catherine?” 

I should, very much,” I retorted. 

Certainly I would have made only one 
sex, and that female, if I had been creating 
the world, or else perhaps I would have 
made several sexes — say half a dozen. 
Then there might have been some variety 
instead of this endless monotony, this same 
old tune of male and female over and over 
83 


tir^ie of Coenrioe 


again. It is so deceptive, too, for every 
time one hears it in a different key or on a 
different instrument, one is led to imagine 
that it is something fresh.” 

“ At least it is an air with variations,” 
Howard said, sitting down by me and try- 
ing to take the sewing out of my hands. 

I don’t like the variations,” I said, 
shrugging my shoulders, and I don’t want 
to be talked to as if I were a woman ! ” 

“ You are not a woman then,” he said in 
a conciliating tone. You are something 
much better — a human being. In fact, I al- 
ways think of you as a fellow-creature first 
and a woman afterward.” 

“ ^ow you are really nice,” I said, put- 
ting down my sewing voluntarily, and — 
like a woman — giving him both my hands. 


84 


CHAPTER VII 

MRS. GREENLAW INQUIRES THE CHARACTER 
OP A SERVANT OP MRS. PEACOCK 

“There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more 
than to know little.” — Bacon. 

I HAVE grown a little tired of the ordi- 
nary straight frocks that little girls wear, 
and so I have for once taken the lead and 
procured a fresh pattern for Amabelle. I 
told Mrs. Peacock about it yesterday, and 
she came in directly after lunch this after- 
noon to help me about cutting out the 
frock and to cut one for her little girl, 
who is the same age as mine, at the same 
time. Her Swiss governess, “ Toute Mo- 
ralite,” can sew remarkably well, but she is 
so unable to follow the directions given on 
an English flat pattern that Mrs. Peacock 
has to set her superior intellect to work 
when it is a question of anything new. The 
pattern in hand, however, proved too much 
for such intellects as we possess. 

85 


turtle i^onsieijjtbeei of (BDentteie 


We started gaily enough, spreading out 
our material on the table, while I unfolded 
the pattern, piece after piece. 

‘‘I think there is some mistake about 
this — I am sure there is a whole family of 
patterns here,^’ I said, feeling that I could 
never cope with such a number of pieces. 

Never mind ; read out the directions, 
and we shall soon see,’^ said Mrs. Peacock, 
nothing daunted. 

I read : “ This simple little frock con- 
sists of fourteen pieces.” 

“ Quite right,” said Mrs. Peacock, still 
cheerful. There are just fourteen here. 
Now the directions for cutting.” 

I went on reading : 

“ Cut the lining-front, full-front, front- 
yoke, and front-gore with the edges having 
a triple perforation on a lengthwise fold, and 
the full back and back-yoke with their hack- 
edges, the back-gore tvith the edge having a 
single notch, the wrist-hand with its long 
edges, and the other parts with the line of 
small single perforations lengthwise of the 
goods.” 

I paused for breath. 

Mrs. Peacock placed her elbows on the 
86 


Cljaracter of a g)erbant 


table, pressed her bands to ber forebead, 
and remained motionless, plunged in 
thought. 

“ I wish I bad bad a mathematical train- 
ing,’’ she said at last. 

^‘Mathematics are no use; it is only 
common sense that is required,” I said, 
growing more cheerful as Mrs. Peacock be- 
came depressed. “ I think we had better 
ignore the directions, spread all the pieces 
on the material, cut them out, and trust to 
common sense to put them together after. 
It will be as good as a Chinese puzzle.” 

“ I am sure we ought to think it all out 
first,” said Mrs. Peacock, and she remained 
in the same thoughtful attitude, muttering 
to herself : “ Front-gore, front-yoke, back- 
edges. Single perforations ! ” and so on. 

“ Why can’t somebody translate the 
thing into English? This is an American 
pattern, and I suppose the language is 
American,” I said, taking great pleasure in 
arranging and fitting the pieces as closely 
as possible on the material as I spoke. 
“ Mtj brain is not equal to fathoming the 
directions, and besides, as you see, I 
haven’t read half of them yet.” 

8T 


turtle of dDOenrioe 


Mrs. Peacock read the printed matter 
over again very carefully. 

‘‘Well, let us follow your plan,’^ she 
said desperately. “ The only thing that is 
clear to me is that we shall want two of each 
of the pieces. That will be twenty-eight — 
or will it be twenty-seven? ” 

“ What can a poor little child want her 
frock in twenty-eight pieces for? We shall 
have to sew them all together again, you 
know. It looked such a simple little thing 
in the picture ! ” I said. 

“You must have the pieces the right 
way of the stuff,” said Mrs. Peacock, pick- 
ing up the fragments I had so carefully 
placed on the cloth, and rearranging them. 

When she had done this to her satisfac- 
tion and we had pinned them on, we threw 
our whole souls into the cutting of them 
out. Mrs. Peacock’s plump face was all 
puckered up into a frown, and her jaw 
moved slightly with every snip of her scis- 
sors. 

I was determined to be accurate for 
once, and I measured half-inch turnings 
with the utmost care, but unfortunately we 
both forgot to cut notches in the stuff as 
88 


Ctiaracter of a ^erbant 


the pattern directed, and this made it ex- 
tremely difficult to fit the twenty-eight 
pieces together in their proper order when 
we had finished cutting them out. We con- 
centrated our attention as far as we were 
able, and tried to use our common sense, 
hut most of the pieces looked alike to our 
unpractised eyes, and we had made but 
little progress when the servant came in to 
ask if Mrs. Greenlaw might speak to Mrs. 
Peacock. 

“Ask her in here,” I said, welcoming 
the diversion. “ She may he able to help 
us. And we shall come hack fresher to it 
if we rest a little.” 

Mrs. Greenlaw came into the room, smil- 
ing serenely and looking perfectly fresh 
and unruffled. 

“ I am so sorry to disturb you,” she said, 
“ hut I have been to Mrs. Peacock’s house 
to inquire the character of a servant, and 
as the matter is rather pressing, I thought 
I might venture to follow her here.” 

“ I am delighted,” I said readily. 

“ You are the best of kind neighbours,” 
Mrs. Greenlaw remarked in her most gra- 
cious manner. 

89 


of (Etienrioe 


“Not at all. I am always glad to see 
you. But shall I leave you with Mrs. Pea- 
cock? I added, hoping to be answered in 
the negative. 

“ No, please don’t go away,” came 
from both ladies in one breath, and Mrs. 
Greenlaw sat down and began her 
inquiry after the approved manner of 
ladies who inquire the character of ser- 
vants. 

“ I have had a parlour-maid applying 
for a situation — such a nice-looking girl — 
and she tells me she has lived with you for 
a year and a half, Mrs. Peacock. Ellen 
Sparks is her name.” 

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Peacock, putting on a 
very guarded air, “ Sparks did live with me 
for eighteen months.” 

“ Did you find her clean? ” asked Mrs. 
Greenlaw. 

“Fairly,” said Mrs. Peacock, closing 
her mouth in a way that gave one clearly 
to understand that the truth and nothing 
more than the truth could be extracted 
from her. 

“ Is she honest? ” inquired Mrs. Green- 
law. 


90 


Cl^aracter of a ^ertant 


“ As far as I know,” answered Mrs. Pea- 
cock. 

Do you call her obliging 1 ” 

I should not call her exactly obliging, 
but I should not like to say she was dis- 
obliging.” 

“ Is she a good worker? ” 

‘‘ She can work very well when she 
likes,” said Mrs. Peacock. 

“ Can she wait well at table, and does 
she keep the silver looking nice ? ” 

Very fairly. I should say,” said 
Mrs. Peacock in a judicial manner that 
seemed quite foreign to her, ‘Hhat that 
is the kind of work she is best fitted 
for.” * 

‘‘Well, you are a cautious woman I” 
laughed Mrs. Greenlaw. 

“ Cautious ” is not a term I should ever 
have applied to Mrs. Peacock; but then I 
had never seen her in this light before, and 
I must say I was amazed at her reticence. 
I had thought Sparks a treasure — I knew 
that she had been accounted so some 
months before, for Mrs. Peacock was never 
tired then of singing her praises, and I had 
been expecting her to pour forth a flood of 
7 91 


of (EDenriflfr 


information of a laudatory nature con- 
cerning her. 

Mrs. Greenlaw continued to prosecute 
her inquiries. 

Is she good-tempered 1 ” 

Well, no, I should not call her good- 
tempered. But then no really capable 
person is. I have always found good .tem- 
per and incompetence synonymous in a 
servant,” said Mrs. Peacock. 

She is really capable, then? ” said Mrs. 
Greenlaw, quickly seizing the point. You 
would advise me to take her? ” 

‘‘You might do worse than try Ellen 
Sparks,” Mrs. Peacock declared after a 
moment’s consideration. “ I am certain 
there are worse servants to he had.” 

Mrs. Greenlaw looked perplexed, and 
was evidently racking her brains for a real- 
ly penetrating question. At last she said : 

“ I suppose you would take her back if 
she applied to you again? ” 

“ Take her back? I should think not I ” 
said Mrs. Peacock, unable to sustain any 
longer her impartial attitude. “I would 
rather do the work twice over myself ! ” 

“ I thought she was a treasure,” I put 
92 


Ctiapacter of a ^ertiant 


in ; and I am sure slie must have been a 
good servant — yonr house is always so 
spotless.” 

“Ah, you don’t know what I went 
through with that girl, or what an amount 
of looking after she required ! 

“ She was so ungrateful, too,” continued 
Mrs. Peacock, throwing oft all reserve. 
“ Dr. Peacock said she was anaemic and 
ought to get more air and exercise, so I 
sent her out every afternoon and gave her 
the money to hire a bicycle. And, would 
you believe it! she never went bicycling at 
all. What she did was to go and sit in the 
green-grocer’s shop all the time that she 
was supposed to be out.” 

“ And no doubt she told lies about it? ” 
said Mrs. Greenlaw sympathetically. 

“ Well, no, she did not exactly tell lies. 
But then, of course, I never thought of say- 
ing in so many words, ‘ Do you go and sit 
at the green-grocer’s when you should be 
bicycling for your health ? ’ But more than 
once I asked her if she had had a nice time 
out, and she said, ‘ Very nice, thank you, 
ma’am.’ I don’t know what you think, but 
I call that prevarication, for how could she 
93 


of dEoenrtoe 


possibly have had a nice time at the green- 
grocer’s, with the smell of stale cabbages 
and rotten apples, and nobody bnt a very 
plain green-grocer to talk to ? ” 

Mrs. Greenlaw and I laughed, and Mrs. 
Peacock’s face relaxed for a moment, but 
she immediately went on quite seriously : 

‘‘ That wasn’t all, for she went into hys- 
terics and dropped the best dessert-service 
when her young man was ordered off to the 
war. And in the end she gave notice only 
because Harold, in his playful way, locked 
her in the pantry. I have come to the con- 
clusion it is no use giving servants so much 
liberty. They do not understand it, and 
they take advantage of you.” 

We laughed again, but Mrs. Peacock 
saw nothing to laugh at. 

Well,” said Mrs. Greenlaw, “ the char- 
acter you give the girl is not exactly per- 
fect, but in these days it is, I believe, what 
one would call ‘ satisfactory,’ and I shall 
engage her.” 

I warn you, you will have trouble with 
her,” Mrs. Peacock began with some 
warmth, and then, remembering herself, 
she went on in a more guarded manner. 

94 


CIbatacter of a ^erbant 


Still, I think she would make a fair aver- 
age servant if she would only exert her- 
self.” 

“ I am not really difficile, and the work 
will be extremely light,” said Mrs. Green- 
law serenely. “ I never interfere with my 
servants if they do their work properly.” 

“ She will require a deal of looking 
after. She will never do anything without 
it, I assure you.” 

Mrs. Greenlaw waved her hand as 
though to dismiss the subject. She had 
been watching me for some time wrestling 
helplessly with gores and yokes and wrist- 
bands, and she now said: 

“ I hope you will excuse me, dear Mrs. 
Howard- Jones, but you are putting those 
pieces together the wrong way up, and your 
yoke will turn into a frill if you join it like 
that.” 

“ How kind of you to come to the rescue ! 
We have been struggling for hours to un- 
derstand the thing,” I said, gladly passing 
the pattern over to her. 

She seemed to know what to do at once, 
and in a very few minutes had sorted the 
pieces, pinned them together, and explained 
95 


gClie of dEOenrtsfe 


the whole pattern so that it could not fail 
to be clear to the meanest intelligence. 

What a clever woman ! I said admir- 
ingly to Mrs. Peacock when she had left 
us alone. 

I was just beginning to get the hang 
of the thing myself/’ said Mrs. Peacock. 

It is really extraordinarily simple.” 

Well, I know I should never have fath- 
omed it, though it seems sim|)le enough 
now. I am sure it requires a giant in- 
tellect to see through such a pattern at 
once.” 

“ A giant intellect or the technical train- 
ing of a dressmaker,” remarked Mrs. Pea- 
cock dryly. I cannot help thinking that 
Mrs. Greenlaw must have been a dress- 
maker at some period of her career. I am 
sure she must have been. Of course we 
know really nothing about her. She is so 
extremely guarded if one asks her a ques- 
tion that there seems no way of finding out. 
I said to her the other day, for example, 
^ How do you like Edenrise 1 ’ and she said : 

“ ‘ Immensely. It is so exhilarating.’ 

‘ A great change from London life, is 
it not? ’ I went on, hoping to find out if she 
96 


Cliaracter of a ^erbant 


had been living in town, but all sbe said 
was: 

“ ‘ Don’t you tbink that every kind of 
life and every kind of place bas its ad- 
vantages if one looks at it in tbe right 
spirit! ’ 

‘ Certainly,’ I said. And when I asked 
her if sbe did not feel very lonely living in 
a bouse all by herself, sbe began quoting 
poetry about solitude or something of that 
sort. At least I supposed it was poetry be- 
cause there seemed to be no sense in it. I 
daresay, however, sbe made it up to put 
me off.” 

I smiled, and Mrs. Peacock continued, 
smiling herself : 

“ It is all very well to smile, but I dis- 
like a mystery above all things, and I sus- 
pect a person who enters so readily into 
other people’s affairs as Mrs. Greenlaw 
does, and keeps her own so extremely dark. 
Why, for instance, does she never mention 
her husband! ” 

Well, I don’t suppose you or I would 
talk much about our husbands under the 
same circumstances.” 

But, what are the circumstances ! ” 

97 




“Incompatibility of temperament, I 
suppose,” I said. “ From what Howard 
says I gather her husband is a perfectly 
impossible person, and they simply agreed 
to live apart.” 

“Well,” said Mrs. Peacock, returning 
cheerfully to a subject of which she had 
some little knowledge, “ Sparks will never 
suit her if she really is a good housekeeper. 
I don’t for a moment believe she is; and 
then, of course, she will let Sparks alone 
to follow her own devices, and you may 
imagine what a state things will be in! 
With all my trouble, I assure you that her 
work was constantly going back, and since 
I have had a new parlour-maid the house 
has been a different place. She asked di- 
rectly she came for a particular kind of 
brush that would go into the corners, and 
she is so thorough^ 

I have often heard this sort of thing be- 
fore from Mrs. Peacock and others, and I 
found it difficult to fix my attention. 

The children came in, and I welcomed 
their appearance as a pleasant diversion, 
even though Amabelle was unusually frac- 
tious and we had to descend to bribes and 
98 


Cljaracter of a g^erbant 


almost to physical force to induce her to 
stand still to see how the frock suited her. 

I should give her a little dose of medi- 
cine to-night if I were you,” Mrs. Peacock 
remarked in a loud whisper. 

Amabelle had retired to sulk in a corner 
and had, of course, taken in the remark, for 
I heard her muttering to herself : 

‘‘Naughty lady! naughty lady! My 
mother is good, my mother is not naughty. 
She never gives good little girls nasty medi- 
cine ! Naughty, naughty lady ! ” 


iLcfC. 


99 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE JOYS OE GARDENING AND THE DISAD- 
VANTAGES OF A PRIVET HEDGE 

II n’y a rien an monde plus sage que de faire un beau 
jardin .” — Anatole France. 

I USED to think before I began to take 
a personal interest in gardening myself, 
that my friends who did were the most un- 
mitigated bores — worse even than golfers 
or cyclists — and gardens always bored me 
in proportion to the interest their proprie- 
tors took in them, and in proportion also 
to their extent and to the number of peach- 
houses, vineries, and ferneries. 

“ If amateur gardeners would only let 
one alone ! ” I used to think when I followed 
Dr. Peacock round his garden, reluctantly 
counting his rosebuds and admiring his 
rockeries. “I daresay I should think it 
quite a nice garden if I were not obliged to 
say so ! ” Then I would artfully admire a 
100 


310^0 of ^aroenins 


particular rosebud, but I soon found that 
that was no use, for he was certain to give 
me something very full blown — on the point 
of falling, in fact— and I was obliged to 
abandon myself to boredom pure and sim- 
ple until I could find an excuse for leaving. 

Now, however, I have entirely changed 
my point of view, for I, as well as almost all 
the housewives of Edenrise, have taken 
seriously to horticulture. Dr. Peacock 
leaves the garden to his wife and confines 
his attentions to his bicycle and his motor- 
car. Elizabeth and her German Garden 
first inspired us with the desire to try our 
hands, I think, though (as Mrs. Peacock re- 
marked) it was very different for Elizabeth 
with money and men at her command, and 
the stimulating absence of her ‘‘man of 
wrath.^’ We have critical husbands, job- 
bing gardeners, and cheap packets of seed 
to contend with. And yet with all these dif- 
ficulties, to which must be added the natu- 
ral interest which children take in garden- 
ing and the passion their fathers have for 
pruning — in spite of such drawbacks, some 
of us have made our gardens a joy to the 
eye — of the proprietor, at any rate. 

101 




I am trying very hard at present to 
teach Dick and Amabelle the difference be- 
tween weeds and seedlings, though I must 
admit that I am somewhat perplexed my- 
self, for weeds, when you have once inter- 
fered with them, have such a crafty way of 
altering their appearance to look like the 
seedlings you most cherish! ‘‘Protective 
mimicry,” Howard calls it, and I call it 
vegetable cunning \ But weeds are not so 
troublesome as snails, for they eat every- 
thing, and the smaller they are the more 
they devour. A little time ago we collected 
a large number in a pail, tried them by spe- 
cial jury, and condemned them to death by 
drowning. Imagine our surprise when we 
found a little later that they had all es- 
caped, for they are, it seems, amphibious ! 
Amabelle was delighted at their cleverness, 
and she cried bitterly when we applied salt 
to the next pailful, while Dick watched 
them squirm and bubble with what I felt 
to be a morbid fascination. There seems 
no help for it now but to take them to the 
garden-paling and throw them as far as we 
can across the road into the field beyond, 
hoping they may never return. We hope 
102 


of ^aroening 


in vain, however ! Few four-footed animals 
are in reality so fleet as the snail, and we 
find that those, which do not get into Mrs. 
Greenlaw’s garden by mistake, are hack 
again in ours and feasting on the roses and 
lilies almost before we can look round! We 
are sure they are the same ones, because 
fresh full-grown snails could not appear 
with such rapidity. 

Slugs we never interfere with; we ig- 
nore their existence. They are like evil 
thoughts, best not spoken of. 

Gardening, I find, is an excellent occu- 
pation for a housewife, for, though it may 
break one’s back and bore one’s friends, it 
keep one’s mind from dwelling too much on 
domestic details within doors. It is so full 
of surprises too, and the essence of good 
husbandry is to take advantage of sur- 
prises. One can never tell what will hap- 
pen next ! For instance, one sows mi- 
gnonette and reaps wild forget-me-not ; one 
scatters parsley-seed and is rewarded with 
a potato-plant 1 One learns to grasp unex- 
pected opportunities; and it was a proud 
moment for Dick and Amabelle and me 
when we dined off our surprise potatoes. 

103 


of CHenri^e 


I observe also that if one takes a deal 
of trouble to cultivate single flowers they 
become double, and if you have a border 
of double daisies they infallibly become 
single. 

It is not only in my garden that these 
things happen, for Mrs. Manners and Mrs. 
Peacock have remarked the same thing. 
We often meet to compare notes and to 
pore over seed catalogues together. Noth- 
ing is more fascinating. The names alone 
excite the imagination, and I used at first 
to choose my flowers almost entirely for 
their names. It is impossible to me to be- 
lieve that a rose would smell as sweet if 
you called it a calceolaria, or a lily of the 
valley would be as attractive if you called 
it a petunia. And such names as Herb- 
Paris, Love-in-a-mist, Sweet-sultan, and 
Solomon^s-seal I consider quite a garden in 
themselves. 

Mrs. Peacock laughed at me, and so I 
reluctantly gave up that plan, and have 
since turned my attention to trying to dis- 
cover what will really grow and do me 
credit, irrespective of pleasant-sounding 
names. I have had my reward, and I wish 
104 


31 o^si of ^aroentng 


you could see my garden now. I insist on 
my friends counting the daffodils and the 
irises, and I give them bunches of wall- 
flower so soon as it has gone to seed at the 
lower part of the stalk, and I do this with- 
out the least compunction, for I know that 
the ladies who come professedly to admire 
my flowers come quite as much to look 
through the gaps in the privet hedge to see 
what Mrs. Greenlaw is doing next door. 

Naturally enough, that lady inspires us 
with admiration not unmixed with envy. 
She is one of us, but with a difference — a 
housewife with no cares. She has no chil- 
dren to dress or to send off to school in the 
mornings, no husband to conciliate when he 
comes home tired in the evenings. She 
toils not, neither does she spin.” Money 
seems no object to her, and while we dig in 
our gardens she waves her hand and her 
gardener makes her borders blossom like 
the rose with plants from Covent Garden. 
While we are wrestling with our servants 
or cooking in the kitchen, she is playing 
croquet with the curate or spending the day 
in town. 

We are all a little envious of her, I think, 
105 




except, perhaps, Mrs. Manners, who re- 
gards her with genuine pity. She was with 
me in my garden a day or so ago when Mrs. 
Greenlaw was sitting alone in hers. 

“ I am so sorry for a woman who is all 
alone in the world like that,’^ she remarked, 
nodding her head in Mrs. Greenlaw’s direc- 
tion. 

Think what a delightfully free time 
she has ! ” I said. “ She can do absolutely 
anything she feels inclined.” 

“ One quickly tires of that sort of 
thing,” said Mrs. Manners with conviction. 

I can remember the time when I was free 
to do what I liked, and I don’t regret it, I 
can assure you. If she only had a child I 
should not he so sorry for her.” 

I believe Mrs. Manners to he incapable 
of envy, and Mrs. Welwyn admires Mrs. 
Greenlaw so much that she hardly envies 
her at all ; while Mrs. Peacock, who is of a 
much more suspicious disposition, envies 
far more than she admires her. Still, there 
is not one of us who has not unhesitatingly 
taken her side with regard to her matri- 
monial affairs, though we have, of course, 
no means of knowing the true state of the 
lOf 


31o^si *of 6arDentng 


case. Mrs. Welwyn is particularly sympa- 
thetic, and she was evidently drawn to Mrs. 
Greenlaw in the first place because she sup- 
posed that her difficulties with her husband 
were of the same nature as her own. She 
hinted as much to me, expressing at the 
same time the greatest admiration for the 
way in which Mrs. Greenlaw seems to bear 
her solitary life. The two, I can see, are 
in a fair way to becoming fast friends. 

Mrs. Peacock takes a livelier interest 
in my garden and comes to see me much 
oftener than usual now I have such a fas- 
cinating neighbour. I feel sure she comes 
partly in the hope of being introduced to 
Mrs. Greenlaw’s brother (an actor, re- 
ported to be of some repute in his profes- 
sion), whom Aunt Jane and I first saw with 
her on a Sunday morning before she had 
settled among us, and whom we occasional- 
ly see in the garden and on his way to and 
from the station. He has not yet been in- 
troduced into Edenrise society, and Mrs. 
Peacock intends to be presented to him or 
know the reason why ! 

Yesterday, when she was admiring my 
peony buds, I could not help wishing that 
8 107 


®tie of Coenrior 


the privet hedge between the gardens had 
been twice as high and twice as thick as it 
is, for, unfortunately, instead of the actor- 
brother, Mrs. Peacock perceived her own 
husband. Dr. Peacock, in the thick of a 
game of croquet with Mrs. Greenlaw, when 
she supposed him to be miles away, attend- 
ing an urgent case. As soon as she caught 
sight of him she ceased to take the slightest 
interest in my peony buds (she even said 
she hoped they might not prove to be ma- 
genta) ; and she coughed so ominously that 
Dr. Peacock had to come in and explain 
that it was entirely the fault of his motor- 
car that he happened to be in Mrs. Green- 
law’s garden playing croquet. The miser- 
able thing had stuck fast on a hill and had 
refused to move, so that Dr. Dale had ar- 
rived from the neighbouring town and had 
secured the patient while he was still strug- 
gling with its works. 

‘‘ A good patient lost,” said Mrs. Pea- 
cock reproachfully. 

“ And a game of croquet into the bar- 
gain,” said Dr. Peacock, declining to take 
the matter seriously. 

“ It’s not as if it were only one patient 
108 


tiriie of ^aroentng 


lost; iVs their first baby,” continued Mrs. 
Peacock gloomily. And I knew that her 
imagination was running riot, picturing 
the arrival of innumerable babies, while 
Dr. Peacock remained tied to a motor-car, 
and Dr. Dale not only assisted at their en- 
trance into the world, but prescribed for all 
the ailments attendant on their passage 
through it. 

I felt that I must say something to 
change the subject, and, seeking about in 
my mind for a topic, tactlessly tried to turn 
the conversation by asking Dr. Peacock if 
he considered Mrs. Greenlaw^ s health to be 
really improving. Mrs. Peacock came as 
near snilBfing as such a well-bred woman can 
when he answered : 

Yes, yes, she is better, much better ; 
but she is nervous and wants to be taken out 
of herself. A sensitive woman like that, 
living alone, having no doubt been badly 
treated by her husband, is bound to suffer, 
physically as well as mentally. But she 
is better, much better. Rest and quiet 
is all she wants, and a little mild distrac- 
tion.” 

“ Such as croquet,” I said. 

109 


®l)e of CEOntrioe 


Oh, yes, croquet is a help, a great 
help. An excellent thing for a nervous 
patient.” 

“ I believe, though, that to play it well 
you have to work your brains quite hard.” 

“ Not if you play with me,” said the doc- 
tor, laughing in his genial way. 

Mrs. Peacock picked an iris and actually 
began to tear otf its petals, one by one, be- 
fore my eyes. 

“ Supposing you go in and have a game 
with her, my dear?” Dr. Peacock said, 
turning to his wife. ‘‘It would be very 
good for you, and I am sure Mrs. Greenlaw 
would be delighted. — Wouldn’t she, Mrs. 
Howard- Jones? ” 

“ I am sure she would,” I said, but Mrs. 
Peacock maintained a rigid silence, and he 
rose to go, remarking cheerfully: 

“ Well, I must be off, much as I should 
like to stay and chat with you ladies. How 
beautiful your garden is looking, Mrs. 
Howard- Jones ! I am sure you must be 
proud of it.” 

“ I am,” I said, feeling pleased and flat- 
tered, and I began to point out some of my 
peculiar treasures as I accompanied him 
110 


W\)t of ^aroentng 


through the garden to the house. “ What 
do you think of my sweet-brier?” I 
asked, but he hurried along, paying but 
scant attention, and I was soon obliged to 
return to Mrs. Peacock. 

She sighed heavily as I sat down by her, 
and said : 

“I suspected that woman from the 
first.” 

“ What do you suspect her of ! ” I asked. 

She is certainly very attractive.” 

“ She may be. I am not so sure about 
that,” said Mrs. Peacock. But she should 
go somewhere where there is more scope 
for her attractions and not settle in a place 
like Edenrise. I tell you this, that if Mr. 
Green is not very careful he will compro- 
mise himself with her. I have hinted as 
much to his sister, but she seems infatuated 
with the woman and her literary acquire- 
ments. No doubt her husband has behaved 
shamefully to her, but it is possible to carry 
sympathy too far.” 

“ I do not think Mrs. Greenlaw will do 
Mr. Green any serious harm,” I said. “ In 
fact, she may do him good— enlarge his 
mind, and so on. He is only consoling him- 
111 




self with her after having been refused by 
the county member’s daughter. It is not 
serious, and croquet helps, you know ; cro- 
quet helps immensely I ” 

Mrs. Peacock laughed, and her ill-hu- 
mour disappeared directly I led her back to 
the more congenial topic of the education 
of our children, although she confessed that 
she was a good deal worried about Harold. 

Toute Moralite,” she told me, had given 
notice to leave, because he had poured 
water down her back and treacle over her 
hair. She had wept copiously “ in her for- 
eign way,” Mrs. Peacock said, and declared 
that treacle was more than flesh and blood 
could bear. Indeed, she showed so much 
feeling that Mrs. Peacock realized the 
force of the provocation which made the 
long-suffering person think of leaving 
Edenrise and her amorous chemist. She 
was even considering sending Harold to 
school. I smiled, wondering whether Har- 
old had been actuated by a reasonable 
childish impulse.” Mrs. Peacock, however, 
put it down to “high spirits.” Her chil- 
dren are never really naughty, and if they 
do any little thing which appears to other 
112 


tCifte 310^0 of ^aroening 


people to be naughty it is “ simply the re- 
sult of high spirits,” 

“ I say to mademoiselle, as I said to the 
nurse who complained that Harold kicked 
her, he is not the first little boy who has 
acted in such a manner,” Mrs. Peacock said, 
feeling, I could see, slightly aggrieved that 
these little pleasantries should not be more 
appreciated. 

I cannot help deploring at times the fact 
that the maternal instinct seems so incom- 
patible with a sense of humour. Mrs. Pea- 
cock is not lacking in humour in a general 
way, but where her children are concerned 
she has not a vestige, and I must say that 
I fail to see the fun in some of my own 
children’s escapades that would probably 
strike me as extremely funny if I were not 
their mother. 

Mrs. Peacock and I talked long and seri- 
ously before we finally decided that Harold 
should go to boarding-school, and I was 
ready enough to fall in with her suggestion 
that Dick and Amabelle should share her 
little girl’s lessons with the governess, for, 
to tell the truth, Dick is getting a little be- 
yond me. His questions on natural history 
113 




and geography are altogether of too pene- 
trating a nature for me, though I have been 
reading Darwin’s Origin of Species and 
Huxley’s Physiography with a view to cop- 
ing with him. 

“ Do you think it is a good plan for the 
children to have lessons of ^ Toute Moral- 
ite ’ with the little Peacock girls? ” I asked 
Howard in the evening. 

leave the matter entirely to you, 
Catherine,” he said. don’t think they 
will learn too much from ‘ Toute Moralite,^ 
and that is an excellent thing.” 

“You ought to take more interest in 
their education,” I remarked severely. 

“ I believe in letting them educate them- 
selves, and I always hope that they will 
educate us at the same time if we give them 
a free hand,” he said. 

“ I daresay you mean that for a joke,” I 
replied, “ but I have never heard you make 
a more sensible remark ! I have learned all 
sorts of virtues already from those chil- 
dren, and so might you if you would only 
take the trouble.” 


114 


CHAPTER IX 

CHIEFLY ABOUT JEALOUSY 

0, beware, my lord, of jealousy; 

It is the green-eyed monster that doth mock 

The meat it feeds on.” — Shakespeare. 

I CANNOT tell why Howard seems to 
have conceived such a prejudice against 
Mrs. Greenlaw. His knowledge of her rela- 
tions with her husband is too slight to war- 
rant it, and I am sure she always treats him 
with marked consideration; yet when she 
appears in her garden Howard secretes 
himself in a secluded corner of ours. When 
she looks through a gap in the hedge and 
asks him, with a fascinating smile, to play 
croquet, he lies and says he does not un- 
derstand the game. I dragged him in a 
day or so ago because I thought it was his 
duty to be more neighbourly, hut I shall not 
do it again, for, though he won the game, he 
seemed to me to be barely civil, and the 
only explanation he offered afterward was 
115 


of CBOenrioe 


that he did not want to play croquet — ^he 
wanted to talk to me. As if he had not 
plenty of opportunities of doing that ! Men 
are such strange creatures, and it is a mat- 
ter of constant wonder to me how many of 
them seem to care only for those women 
who are dull and domestic and good. If I 
were a man I know I should hover round a 
clever, attractive woman like Mrs. Green- 
law, and never look at a dull, good woman 
like myself ! I do not for a moment mean to 
imply that Mrs. Greenlaw is not good, but 
I am quite sure that besides being unfortu- 
nate, she is singularly attractive. She 
moves with such grace, and she has such a 
way of treating each individual she encoun- 
ters as though her whole life were centred 
in that person at the moment, that, though 
I may realize that she treats the butcher 
and the milkman in the same manner, I, for 
one, cannot help feeling flattered. 

“ 0 Mrs. Howard- J ones,” she will say 
if I have not seen her for a day or two, 
how I have been hungering for a sight of 
you ! And won’t you come in and have tea 
with me 1 ” 

And she will look at me in such a win- 
116 


about 3|ealouo^ 


ning manner and seem so earnest about it 
that I feel it would be nothing short of bru- 
tal to refuse. Dick and Amabelle are quite 
fascinated by her, and I have to spend a 
great deal of time in hunting them out of 
her garden. Often enough when I think I 
have secured them and set them to work 
to weed or rake the paths, one or other of 
them will escape, and I see the siren receiv- 
ing them once more with open arms. It is 
a difficult position for me, and, much as I 
dislike barbed wire, I am afraid I shall be 
obliged to use it to fill in those gaps in the 
privet hedge. 

Howard says children ought to be obe- 
dient without barbed wire, but then he is 
not a mother, and fathers do not under- 
stand or follow the workings of their queer 
little minds as we do. I used to maintain to 
him that our children were not spoiled, but 
now I tell him that spoiled children turn 
out much better than those who are con- 
stantly thwarted; and I instance the little 
Welwyns, whose lives are made a burden 
to them by being constantly told not to do 
things that are right and natural for them 
to do. 


117 


of (Eoenrior 


I have often tried to point ont to their 
raother that too much care is really had for 
children, hut she has never paid any atten- 
tion, and I am sure she considers me a reck- 
less and indulgent sort of mother, whose 
children are bound to come to a had end. 
Mrs. Greenlaw might give her some useful 
advice on the subject, for that lady exerts 
such a powerful influence over her at pres- 
ent that she could do almost anything with 
her. Besides, I have often observed that 
mothers are far more ready to listen to ad- 
vice about the training of children from sin- 
gle or childless women than from other 
mothers. 

In any case Mrs. Welwyn is so absorbed 
in her friendship with Mrs. Greenlaw that 
her children are left in comparative peace. 
One sees now and then such sudden, ab- 
sorbing attachments between two women, 
founded on an attraction as strong as and 
more difficult to understand than that felt 
by a man and a woman, who, as it is termed, 
fall in love ” with one another. Though 
why we should say “ fall in love ” as we say 
fall into sin ” or “ into temptation,” I fail 
to see ; unless, perhaps, the phrase is a relic 
118 


about 31 ealouo^ 


[from the days when the celibate life was 
considered the ideal life, marriage a neces- 
sary evil, and falling in love ’’ synony- 
mous with falling into sin. It would be in- 
teresting to know how much of this feeling 
still survives, and how many people con- 
tinue to regard the natural expression of 
love as a concession to their lower natures. 
One ponders over and theorizes about such 
subjects, but they are quite beyond the pale 
of my actual knowledge. And, after all, it 
is just as interesting for me to see that 
Mrs. Welwyn, who has found so little satis- 
faction in her married life, has thrown her 
whole soul into this new attraction, and 
would, I believe, go to the uttermost 
ends of the earth if Mrs. Greenlaw only 
wished it. 

I have had plenty of opportunities of 
watching Mrs. Welwyn and her growing 
friendship for Mrs. Greenlaw through the 
privet hedge, but I have had very little op- 
portunity of any private conversation with 
her since the day when she told me her 
troubles, until last night, when she and her 
husband came to dinner with us. 

I was alone with her in the garden for 
119 


of (Ii;D^nrtoe 


a short time after dinner when Howard and 
Mr. Welwyn were smoking in the dining- 
room. It was a warm evening, as warm as 
summer, though we are only at the begin- 
ning of May. A ruddy glow lingered in the 
west. The moon, almost full, was hidden 
behind the trees, but its light was fast gain- 
ing upon the daylight. 

We strolled up and down, talking of the 
weather, admiring the sky, the fresh green 
of the budding trees, and congratulating 
ourselves upon the lengthening days. And 
having exhausted such general topics, an 
embarrassing silence fell between us. I 
broke it at last by a question concerning her 
relations with her husband. 

“ Oh, if s just the same ! I can’t do any- 
thing ! ” she answered impatiently, and 
with such evident unwillingness to enter 
further into the matter, that I said no more. 

Her eyes wandered continually in the 
direction of Mrs. Greenlaw’s garden, and I 
soon became aware of the sound of low 
voices coming from the other side of the 
hedge, and, stopping a moment to look 
through a gap, I perceived the red glow of 
a lighted cigar, and then, as the moon rose 
120 


aibout 


above the trees, I saw Mrs. Greenlaw’s 
graceful figure stand out white against the 
dark background of the evergreen oak. 

She stood for a moment in front of the 
smoker, who was seated in the shadow of 
the trees, and then she sat down by his 
side. 

“Isn’t she beautiful?” said Mrs. Wel- 
wyn fervently, clasping my arm. 

“ Yes,” I answered, in a rather doubtful 
tone, for Mrs. Greenlaw’s beauty puzzles 
me. Her attraction seems to me to be so 
much in her manner and in her complete 
faith in her own charms. I do not think her 
so pretty as Mrs. Welwyn, for instance, but 
she has in perfection that rare gift, which 
some women who are not actually beautiful 
possess, of impressing the world with the 
fact of their beauty. It may be that when 
one looks at some beautiful people one is 
more struck by some mental or moral qual- 
ity in them than by their physical charms. 
It is so, I know, with Mrs. Welwyn, who is 
too timid to do herself justice. Other peo- 
ple take her at her own estimate, as they 
take Mrs. Greenlaw at hers. 

“I think she is perfectly lovely,” re- 
121 




peated Mrs. Welwyn, and after a pause she 
said: 

I did not know her brother was coming 
to-night.” 

They seem on excellent terms. You 
know him, of course 1 ” 

“ Oh, yes, but I don’t go when I know he 
is there. I would so much rather see her 
alone,” Mrs. Welwyn said. “Have you 
been introduced to him? ” 

“Just through the hedge,” I answered, 
“ and I was attracted by his pleasant voice 
— ^voices often appeal to me more strongly 
than faces. Mrs. Peacock is extremely 
anxious to be introduced to him, and to 
have the pleasure of introducing him to 
Edenrise society,” I continued, laughing. 

“ His time is so much taken up,” Mrs. 
Welwyn said. “ He cannot come often, and 
when he does come he comes to see her, not 
to see Edenrise society. Men hate tea- 
parties and things like that ! ” 

“ Of course. I understand. Why should 
she introduce him if she doesn’t wish to? ” 
I said. 

“ Naturally he wants to see her, for no- 
body who really knew Mrs. Greenlaw could 
122 


about 31 ealoufl?s 


possibly help loving her,” said Mrs. Wel- 
wyn fervently. 

Howard and Mr. Welwyn came out into 
the garden, and we talked no more of Mrs. 
Greenlaw and her doings except for a few 
moments when Mr. Welwyn again turned 
the conversation in her direction. 

“ Do you see much of your neighbour! ” 
he asked, when Howard and Mrs. Welwyn 
were at a little distance from us. 

^‘We are on very good terms,” I an- 
swered, “ but I do not know her so well as 
Mrs. Welwyn does.” 

“ Ella has taken a very great fancy to 
her. She seems to me to be quite a nice 
woman,” he said, a little doubtfully. And 
then, after a slight pause, he asked : 

“ Do you know the cause of her being 
separated from her husband! ” 

I don’t think it is a legal separation,” 
I replied. They seem to have parted by 
mutual consent, and from what Howard 
says about her husband I should think she 
was very much better without him.” 

He ought not to allow her to live alone, 
especially in a place like this, where people 
gossip so,” he remarked with decision. 

9 123 


turtle i^ousieijjtbesi of €tjenrt£(e 


“ I am sure we gossip very little/^ I said, 
standing np for Edenrise as in duty bound. 

Not nearly as much as they do in other 
places. And if I had quarrelled with my 
husband — ” I stopped. 

“ What would you do 7 ” he asked. 

Oh, I should certainly keep away ; 
settle in a place like this and wait for him 
to come and make advances to me. It is 
much the best plan. Howard always has to 
make advances when we disagree,” I said 
lightly. 

Even if you happen to be in the 
wrong? ” 

More than ever in that case ! I never 
can own myself in the wrong unless he 
first admits — ” I broke off. Howard and 
Mrs. Welwyn were within hearing, and I 
was suddenly conscious of having said 
something quite different to Mrs. Welwyn 
when she asked my advice a little time ago. 

One has to tell so many untruths in 
order to convey a really truthful impres- 
sion,” I said to myself in excuse of the ap- 
parent contradiction, as we went indoors to 
play whist. 

Mr. Welwyn, who talks a great deal in 
124 


about iflealouo^ 


the ordinary way, was unusually silent dur- 
ing the evening, his wife unusually talka- 
tive, and on several occasions his eyes 
sought mine. I could not divine his 
thoughts, but I have an idea that he is be- 
ginning to be jealous of Mrs. Greenlaw’s 
influence over Mrs. Welwyn, and this falls 
in with my theory that men are more often 
jealous of their wives’ women friends now- 
adays than of their friends of the other 
sex. They are somehow suspicious of 
strong feminine attachments and a little en- 
vious of them, because they know that one 
woman understands another, in certain 
subtle ways, far better than the most sym- 
pathetic man can do. 

Real jealousy — the green-eyed mon- 
ster,” so vividly painted by poets and 
dramatists — no longer exists, I believe, in 
polite society. It is as extinct as the mon- 
sters of the Tertiary age, whose bones alone 
remain to give us some idea of their ex- 
traordinary proportions. One still reads in 
the newspapers of jealousy as a motive for 
crime, and one may gather some faint no- 
tion of the force of a passion which has left 
behind it traditions so powerful that a self- 
125 


j^otts;etDit3e0 of (£0enrt5?e 


respecting man still feels it incumbent on 
him to punish an unfaithful wife or mis- 
tress and her lover with death; though in 
nine cases out of ten his personal feelings 
do not prompt him to such a desperate act 
of retribution. It is not so much jealousy 
as a passion for decorum. Our modern atti- 
tude of mind is so ditferent from the old 
that jealousy like Othello’s is almost beyond 
our comprehension, and I cannot help feel- 
ing myself that the Moor must have been 
conscious of the humorous side of the mat- 
ter when he says, after he has strangled 
Desdemona : 

“ When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, 

. . . . Then must you speak 

Of one that loved riot wisely, Imt too welV' 

Love nowadays may be more sympa- 
thetic and less blind than of old, or our 
keener feelings may be entirely smothered 
by convention. In any case, such jealousy 
is beyond us at Edenrise. Mrs. Welwyn 
does not entertain the passion, and I am 
sure I should never be so unwise as to in- 
dulge it so far as to seek to revenge myself 
on Howard or on any woman with whom he 
126 


about 3|ealous;^ 


happened to fall in love. We are all, I 
know, superficially fickle, but habits of sym- 
pathy and affection hind ordinary people 
together far more firmly than they suspect. 
Dr. Peacock may be irresistibly attracted 
to Mrs. Greenlaw, hut Mrs. Peacock knows 
that there is no cause for real jealousy, and 
she is jealous only in the petty, modern 
way. She dislikes Mrs. Greenlaw, and 
would prefer her husband to devote all his 
spare time to her amusement, and not waste 
any of it in flirting or in playing croquet 
with Mrs. Greenlaw. She is jealous, too, 
of that lady^s social gifts. 

Mr. Welwyn is jealous. He would like, 
I think, to fill the place in his wife’s affec- 
tions which Mrs. Greenlaw now fills. I may 
be wrong, but I believe he would make ad- 
vances if his pride would only allow him, 
and he would be quite prepared to make 
concessions to her if she would only ap- 
proach him in the right spirit. But Mrs. 
Welwyn is too much taken up with Mrs. 
Greenlaw at present to think very much 
about her relations with her husband. 

Miss Green is beginning to be jealous of 
Mrs. Greenlaw because she recognises that 
127 


®lje of (Il;t)enrtoe 


she is far cleverer and more attractive than 
she is herself, and she has lately made the 
discovery that her brother spends too mnch 
time over the effeminate and wholly unsuit- 
able game of croquet on her lawn. 

“ Should you be jealous if I were to 
become such inseparable friends with Mrs. 
Greenlaw as Mrs. Welwyn is?” I asked 
Howard last night after the Welwyns had 
gone. 

“ Certainly not,” he answered a little 
too promptly. “But then you would not 
strike up such an absurd friendship. You 
are a sensible woman.” 

“It does not please me to be called a 
sensible woman,” I said, “ for I know that 
it implies a reflection of some sort. It is 
almost as bad as ‘ estimable ’ or ‘ clean, 
honest, and industrious ’ applied to a fe- 
male, or ‘ a good husband ’ to a man. One 
knows that in those cases the persons so 
described are lacking in all the other vir- 
tues. But supposing I were not a sensible 
woman, and were to contract a violent 
friendship, do you think that you would not 
be jealous? ” 

Howard smiled and shook his head. 

128 


aibottt 3|ealous;^ 


“ You see, one has to care a good deal 
for a person to be really jealous of her,” he 
remarked. 

Oh, there I cannot agree with you at 
all,” I said, for my theory is that you have 
to care very little to be jealous and a great 
deal to be incapable of jealousy.” 

“ What nonsense you talk I ” he said, 
laughing. “ You are getting altogether out 
of your depth.” 

Very well,” I said meekly. Let us 
talk of flannel petticoats and camphor pil- 
ules.” 


129 


CHAPTER X 


AMONG THE BUTTERCUPS 

** What have the meads to do with thee. 

Or with thy youthful hours ? 

Live thou at court, where thou mayst be 
The queen of men — ^not flowers.” 

Herrick. 

The meadows round Edenrise are real- 
ly beautiful, especially now in the spring- 
time, and I look forward almost as eagerly 
as the children do to the mornings we spend 
together in the fields. No staid housewife 
could possibly go out alone, lie for an hour 
on the grass in the sunshine, and come home 
with arms full of flowers — it would be a 
perfectly scandalous proceeding. But if one 
takes one^s children it becomes a proper, 
and even praiseworthy action, and I am 
able to enjoy myself accordingly. For even 
the most jaded housewife can rejoice in the 
vivid gold and green of a field of butter- 
cups — as much, perhaps, as her children 
130 


3tmong tlie Buttercups^ 


can do. Mrs. Peacock, who is a most mat- 
ter-of-fact person, will speak quite raptur- 
ously of such things sometimes, and Mrs. 
Manners, I know, is capable of fixing her 
eyes on the graceful outlines of a tree, or 
the colour of the evening sky, and of quite 
forgetting her seven children, her rheu- 
matic husband, and all her household cares ; 
while Mrs. Welwyn, though hardly what 
one would call a lover of nature, is fully 
alive to the beauty of moonlight effects. 
We think it foolish and affected to talk 
of the beauties of nature and to quote 
appropriaately from the poets, as Miss 
Green is wont to do, but the changing 
seasons never, I think, find us wholly un- 
responsive. 

The fresh green of the early summer de- 
lights me now as much as in the winter the 
wonderful brownness of the whole country 
delighted me. The warm purplish brown 
of the winter landscape is as soothing to my 
eye as deep green in the glare of summer, 
and when I think of our English winter, 
frosty fields and snow-clad hills do not 
form part of my mental picture ; I always 
call up the scene that my eyes have so often 
131 


of Cornrioe 


rested upon here in my walks with the chil- 
dren. Brown trees with their delicate bare 
branches outlined against a sky of pale 
blue or brownish gray, a brown man lead- 
ing a brown horse patiently drawing a cart- 
load of brown faggots, while beyond rises 
a background of purplish-brown hills, their 
outlines mellowed by our soft English at- 
mosphere. I rarely envy my friends their 
winters in sunnier climes. 

‘‘ How much better we should be if we 
stayed at home and really observed our 
own surroundings instead of rushing 
through foreign countries ! ” Mrs. Peacock 
said last year, when she started for a six 
weeks’ tour through France, Switzerland, 
Italy, and Holland. And as I strolled in 
the fields with the children I thought how 
much better her theory was than her prac- 
tice; how much pleasanter it was to stay 
at home and endeavour to feel the charm of 
one’s own countryside. 

My favourite walk with the children 
is through steep path-fields. Beech-trees 
crown the summit of the hill, and the fields, 
now golden with buttercups, slope down to 
a little stream in the bottom, by whose side 
132 


aimong ti)e llButtercups^ 


one may find forget-me-nots and other 
plants that love the water. 

This morning I took the little Welwyns 
with me as well as Dick and Amabelle, that 
I might have the pleasure of allowing them 
to do just as they liked without once telling 
them not to, and I sat down among the but- 
tercups watching the four children at play. 
Dick and Roger Welwyn raced off to the 
stream, while Nancy and Amabelle wan- 
dered among the grass and flowers, gath- 
ering large bunches which they brought to 
me from time to time to keep. And as I 
watched them my heart ached, as a moth- 
er's heart is apt to do, that they should have 
to grow up into ordinary men and women 
and face a cold and callous world. 

Presently Amabelle, who is curiously 
sympathetic sometimes, thinking, I sup- 
pose, that I was lonely, came and sat on my 
lap and began to tell me a story about a 
little tree whose mother-tree buttoned on 
its bark every morning and put a hat with 
waving green feathers on its head, and how 
the little tree wriggled and threw up its 
arms in the wind and said, “ No, I wonT be 
dressed ! I wonT be dressed ! ” 

133 


of (Eoenrioe 


“ Mummy, you are not listening,” Ama- 
belle said reproachfully, stopping sud- 
denly. 

It was true. I was not listening very 
attentively at that moment, for other voices 
had fallen upon my ear, and I leaned for- 
ward to try and catch the words. I could 
see nobody, but the words came quite clear- 
ly to me from below, spoken in a sonorous 
and familiar voice : 

Until I knew you I never knew what 
love really meant.” 

“ Love comes to us in various forms,” 
was the reply in a cheerful treble. And 
just at that moment I caught sight of Mr. 
Green and Mrs. Greenlaw a little below us 
on the other side of the hedge. 

Mrs. Greenlaw, I thought, looked re- 
lieved as soon as she saw me. She came 
lightly over the stile and sat down at my 
side, while the curate eyed me rather anx- 
iously. 

“How quietly you came! You quite 
startled me 1 ” I said, inwardly congratulat- 
ing myself on my tact. 

“ I thought we were talking rather loud- 
ly,” Mrs. Greenlaw remarked carelessly. 

134 


among llButtercups; 


“ Mr. Green was telling me about his diffi- 
culties with the rector, and I feel it quite a 
disgrace to be even distantly related to such 
a ^ low ’ and retrograde person — as the rec- 
tor, I mean.” 

She laughed, and Mr. Green, instead of 
being shocked, as he ought to have been, 
looked admiringly down on her. The sun 
shone on her golden hair, and her silver- 
gray dress looked charming among the but- 
tercups. 

shall stay here a little while with 
you, if I may,” she said to me, glancing up 
at Mr. Green in a manner that he took to 
mean dismissal. 

“ I wish I could stay too, but ^ when duty 
calls,^ ” he began. 

“ I sit still and let her call,” I put in. 
‘‘Why not try the same plan, Mr. Green? 
Duty will keep perfectly well this weather.” 

He looked at me and smiled in his most 
condescending manner. Then, taking offi 
his hat with a sweep, he turned and strode 
off down the field toward the village, with- 
out another word. 

Amabelle had been sitting quite quietly 
all this time, her thoughts, I supposed, far 
135 


i^ousieiJ)tbe£i of d^oenrioe 


away with her little tree and its mother- 
tree, but at this moment, to my horror, she 
remarked in her clear tones : 

Do you know Mr. Green is an ass. 
Mummy ? 

My dear child, whatever could put 
such an idea into your head! ” I said as 
calmly as I could. 

Daddy says he is,” she said solemnly, 
and as though that completely settled the 
question. 

It couldn’t have been this Mr. Green 
that he meant,” I said lamely. “And in 
any case, little girls should never repeat 
things.” 

I could see that Mrs. Greenlaw was 
with difficulty suppressing her merriment, 
though I tried not to look at her. 

“ I love donkeys,” Amabelle went on fer- 
vently, “ and asses too, ’cause I b’lieve they 
are the gentleman donkeys. Only I wish I 
knew why Daddy said Mr. Green was an 
ass.” 

“ You see,” I said triumphantly to Mrs. 
Greenlaw, “Amabelle does not use the 
word as a term of opprobrium, but rather 
as a term of endearment,” forgetting that 
136 


among tlje llButtercupo 


that did not in the least excuse Howard — 
and I have so often told him to he more 
careful before the children. One would 
have thought that a legal training would 
have made him more cautious. 

‘^Amabelle is a darling, and I am so 
glad to have found you both here ! ” Mrs. 
Greenlaw said, putting her arms round the 
child. “ It is so pleasant to be in the fields 
with children. It brings one nearer to na- 
ture, and I am sure it expands one’s sym- 
pathies.” 

Mrs. Greenlaw fixed her eyes pensively 
on the shining toe of her pointed shoe, ar).d 
Amabelle, having rolled away down the 
sloping field, she went on: Now, with Mr. 
Green one cannot help feeling that he car- 
ries the used-up air of the chapel-of-ease 
into the fields with him, and I keep expect- 
ing him to address me as ‘ dearly beloved 
brethren,’ and to begin his remarks with ‘ I 
am sure we must all feel gratified.’ ” 

“ I can fancy I heard him saying to you 
just now, ‘ I am sure we must feel gratified 
at the sight of so many buttercups ! ’ ” I 
said, laughing and looking at her rather 
pointedly. 


137 




She smiled responsively, but only said : 

“ Now Amabelle is so interesting, be- 
cause one never knows what she will say 
next.” 

‘‘Unfortunately not,” I remarked feel- 
ingly. 

We sat in silence for a few moments 
until we saw Mrs. Welwyn coming to- 
wards us from the top of the field, her 
figure looking very slight and girlish 
against the tender green on the beech- 
trees. 

“My dear Ella!” said Mrs. Greenlaw, 
springing up. 

“ My dear Honora! ” said Mrs. Welwyn, 
and they kissed each other on both cheeks, 
looking into one another's eyes. 

“ You could not trust me with the chil- 
dren!” I said reproachfully when I had 
greeted Mrs. Welwyn. 

“It wasn’t that, indeed, dear. I saw 
Honora go by our house, and I hoped I 
might find her by coming round the other 
way. I wanted so much to see her.” She 
smiled contentedly as she sat down on the 
grass. “ How lovely it is I And where is 
Mr. Green! ” 


138 


aimong t^e llButtercupsf 


“Duty called him and he went,” said 
Mrs. Greenlaw, “ leaving pleasure here.” 

“ So like him,” Mrs. Welwyn said, with 
a sigh of satisfaction. 

I got up and left them together, while I 
ran with Nancy and Amabelle down to the 
stream; and there we found the little boys 
exultant, their hats full of tadpoles, their 
clothes torn and muddy. I cast an anxious 
glance in the direction of Roger’s mother, 
but she was quite oblivious ; her back was 
turned to us and she was walking away up 
the hill, her hand clasped in Mrs. Green- 
law’s. 

When Howard made his usual inquiry 
for the curate and the siren in the evening, 
I said rather sharply: 

“ You spoke the truth for once when 
you said Mr. Green was an ass.” 

Howard only laughed and said lightly : 
“ I have often thought it, but have carefully 
refrained from saying so.” 

“ Then you should be careful of what 
you think when the children are present,” 
I retorted. “ Amabelle repeated your 
thought to Mrs. Greenlaw.” 

Howard whistled. 

10 139 


f^ougeix)tt)es( of 


“ How you women and children do prat- 
tle ! ” he remarked. 

“Supposing” — began after a pause, 
during which I was sewing a button on 
to his shirt-band and pricking the back of 
his neck rather ruthlessly — “ supposing a 
clergyman of the Church of England were 
to marry a divorced woman. What would 
be the result? What would his bishop say, 
and what would happen to him ? ” 

“ Excommunication, transubstantiation, 
all that sort of thing, I suppose,” he said 
gaily, “ and, besides, she isn^t divorced.” 

“ I did not mention any particular lady, 
and I believe that there is nothing like a 
legal training for making a person flip- 
pant ! ” I said, getting up to leave the room. 

“ But I have never studied ecclesiastical 
law. Don’t go, Catherine, I want to talk to 
you.” 

“ And ecclesiastical law is the only thing 
I want to talk about just now,” I said firm- 
ly, closing the door behind me. 


140 


CHAPTER XI 


A children’s party 

“ Trip it, little urchins alll 
Lightly as the little bee, 

Two by two, and three by three ; 

And about, about go we,” 

Elizabethan Song. 

The Peacocks have a little meadow at 
the end of their garden, and they usually 
have a children’s party in the summer, when 
the hay is cut. Yesterday was the day of 
the party, little Cecily Peacock’s fourth 
birthday, and we all met, mothers as well 
as children. 

Mrs. Manners came with four of hers, 
Mrs. Welwyn with her two, I with my two, 
and one or two outsiders, leading their well- 
groomed otfspring by the hand. 

The children looked charming, all in 
clean frocks and suits, many of them with 
hare feet and sandals, for that is one of our 
141 


l^ous?efcDit3efl( of CDenrior 


latest ideas with regard to hygienic cloth- 
ing. 

Mrs. Peacock, with her three children, 
awaited us on the lawn, where we were to 
have tea before going into the hay-field, and 
I watched her with a sympathetic eye as 
the little ones dispersed and began to chase 
one another about the garden regardless of 
flower-beds and borders. It was a rea- 
sonable childish impulse,” and Mrs. Pea- 
cock controlled her feelings admirably. 
She only smiled (a little sadly, it is true) 
when Amabelle brought her a large piece 
of a treasured pink geranium, which Dick 
had inadvertently kicked otf. 

^‘It does things good to take bits off, 
you know. Daddy says so,” Amabelle re- 
marked consolingly. 

“ Let us take the children into the field,” 
I suggested. 

“ No, not before tea ; it isn’t worth 
while,” Mrs. Peacock answered. “ Don’t 
jump on the flower-beds, there’s dear chil- 
dren,” she implored — in vain. The chil- 
dren never seemed to hear her even. 

I tried to catch Amabelle, but she eluded 
me by bounding into the middle of a bed 
142 




of petunias. She and I had already had a 
little difference of opinion because she had 
brought a present for Cecily, and at the last 
moment had declined to part with it. It 
was a tiny gilt tea-set, and as she carried it 
from our house to the Peacocks’ I knew that 
her heart-strings were winding themselves 
around it. 

“ I should like a little tea-set like Ce- 
cily’s,” she said wistfully more than once. 

“ Only wait till your birthday comes,” I 
answered cheerfully. 

My birfday isn’t for years and years,” 
was her doleful reply. 

Still, I did not suspect her of the design 
of keeping Cecily’s present herself, and I 
was very much taken aback when she re- 
fused to part with it as soon as the moment 
of trial came. 

You have got something for Cecily, 
haven’t you, dear?” I said when she 
had politely wished her ‘‘many happy 
’turns.” 

“No, I haven’t got nothing,” Amabelle 
answered, slipping the little parcel into her 
pocket and putting her hands behind her 
back in a defiant manner. 

143 




What could I do? I could not make a 
scene there before all the children and their 
mothers, and force the offering from her, 
and so I was obliged to leave her to her own 
conscience. 

Fortunately little Cecily was quite ob- 
livious. She had had enough birthday 
presents, and it was with the utmost diffi- 
culty that she was induced even to say 
how d^you do ” to her guests. Her whole 
energies were absorbed in a solitary game, 
which she played at a little distance from 
the others during the whole of the party. 
I watched her myself while she did the 
same thing over at least a dozen times. 
First she placed a little piece of stick care- 
fully on the grass and made believe to cover 
it over and tuck it up in bed, then she 
climbed laboriously on to a big stone and 
jumped off, puffing vigorously as she 
did so. 

“ Come on ! Don’t take any notice of 
her ! ” Harold said to Dick, who had stopped 
a moment to look at her. ‘‘ She has been 
playing that game ever since last Saturday, 
when we went to the circus. She never 
stops. She’s the clown’s brother Billy, you 
144 


SL part^ 


know, that put his candle to bed and blowed 
himself out of window. Come on ! ” 

It was only the sight of the birthday 
cake and the four little coloured candles 
(guttering horribly in the summer breeze) 
that induced Cecily to leave her game and 
sit up to tea with the rest. 

All the children were hunted off the 
flower-beds and gathered round a table on 
the lawn, and, as often happens, no sooner 
were they seated than an unnatural shyness 
came over them. They sat silent, solemnly 
eating their bread-and-butter and gazing 
at the cake and the candles in the middle of 
the table with expressionless faces. 

“ Aren’t they good children ! ” said Mrs. 
Peacock, nodding her head approvingly at 
them. 

Suddenly little Roger Welwyn, a very 
nervous child, burst into tears. 

“I am not enjoying -myself so very 
much!” he sobbed, overcome by shy- 
ness. 

His mother tried to reason with him. 
Mrs. Manners gave him a bun, “ Toute 
Moralite ” a lump of sugar. It had no ef- 
fect, but Mrs. Peacock’s promise that he 
145 




should blow out the candles after tea was 
over, completely restored him to cheerful- 
ness. 

He is only five, poor little mite ! ” said 
Mrs. Manners kindly. 

“Where is Dr. Peacock?” I asked. 
“He is always the life of a children’s 
party. Nobody could be shy in his pres- 
ence.” 

“ I am expecting him every moment, but 
he is so busy you’ve no idea. He was up 
half the night again last night. It is so 
awkward,” Mrs. Peacock continued, drop- 
ping her voice to a loud whisper, “ when 
babies will come in the night. I suppose it 
can’t be helped, but it is excessively incon- 
venient.” 

Little Podge Manners, who was sitting 
close by, a comfortable, stolid child, looked 
up and said; 

“ He needn’t bring them in the night if 
he doesn’t want to. He brought us our 
baby in the morning.” 

Mrs. Peacock looked at Mrs. Manners 
and smiled. 

“ Oh, you see. Podge,” she said quite 
readily, “ such lots of people want babies 
146 


a CljiUren's? IParc^ 


now that there isn^t time to take them all 
in the day, and so he has to bring them to 
some people in the night.” 

Podge seemed satisfied. 

When I grow np,” he said solemnly, 
“ I shall have a wife and lots and lots of 
babies.” 

“He^s so fond of babies,” his mother 
explained in her motherly way. 

“ I hate babies ! They are poison,” 
drawled Phyllis Peacock, and the remark — ■ 
evidently intended as a joke — was greeted 
with peals of laughter. 

Where do children get such ideas ? ” 
said Mrs. Peacock, looking as pleased as 
though the remark had been one of start- 
ling originality. 

The laughter continued, and the ice 
being broken in this way, the party became 
quite convivial. Harold and Dick, who had 
got together at the end of the table, had 
to be forcibly separated, and I did not envy 
Christina Manners her place between them. 
Christina is a sweet-looking girl of nine- 
teen, and, as her mother says, very good 
with the little ones. She certainly excelled 
herself on this occasion, for she kept the 
147 




peace in a masterly manner between Har- 
old and Dick. 

“ Ob, berets daddy I ” Here’s Dr. Pea- 
cock I ” shouted tbe children. And here’s 
Mrs. Greenlaw, too ! ” 

Dr. Peacock came bustling up, accom- 
panied by Mrs. Greenlaw. 

“ What ! begun tea without me ! What 
impudence! I hope you have saved us 
some cake, Cecily,” he cried. “ My dear,” 
he said, turning to his wife, “ here is 
Mrs. Greenlaw. I have induced her to 
come because it is the grown-up people 
who always enjoy a children’s party the 
most.” 

It is so kind of him to ask me ! ” said 
Mrs. Greenlaw with her most gracious 
smile. 

Mrs. Peacock welcomed her with an ex- 
cellent appearance of cordiality, found her 
a place at her side, and gave her some tea, 
chatting pleasantly all the time. 

“Your husband will be here in a few 
minutes, Mrs. Howard- Jones,” said the 
doctor, nodding to me. “And Green and 
Manners are coming, too.” 

The children claimed his whole atten- 
148 


at C^iluren’flf ipart^ 


tion, and as soon as he devoted it to them 
the party became perfectly nproarions. 

‘‘ There is nothing so delightful as a 
children’s party,” said Mrs. Greenlaw loud- 
ly, trying to make her voice audible to Mrs. 
Manners, who was sitting next to her. 

I always enjoy myself. It takes one 
out of one’s self,” said Mrs. Manners with 
her happy smile, raising her voice almost 
to a shout. 

Polite conversation became an impos- 
sibility during the rest of the meal, and 
when it was over we all started off for the 
hay-field, except Cecily, who returned to 
her game on the lawn, and little Nancy 
Welwyn, who wished to learn it, and 
Toute Moralite,” who stayed to look after 
the two babies. 

The rest of the children were in the 
highest spirits. They rushed about the 
field, rolling over and over in the hay, chas- 
ing one another and joining forces to bury 
Dr. Peacock, Howard, or Mr. Green, and to 
sit on their prostrate bodies until they 
were shaken off and buried themselves in 
their turn. 

Mrs. Peacock and I stood watching the 
149 


i^onsfeivtbesf of ^oenttoe 


scene. Her face was wreathed in smiles, 
until suddenly her eye happened to light 
upon Mrs. Welwyn, who was seated on a 
hay-cock at a little distance from us talking 
to Mrs. Greenlaw. 

Her face clouded and she said impa- 
tiently, “He^s away again!” jerking her 
head in their direction. 

“ Who ? ” I asked, though of course I 
knew perfectly well who she meant. 

« Why, Mr. Welwyn. I think the way 
he neglects her is shameful, don’t you I ” 
Oh, he is obliged to go to Paris and all 
sorts of places about his book,” I said 
quietly. 

** Nonsense ! Any one can write a book 
at home if he likes. He has plenty of books. 
She hasn’t any spirit or she wouldn’t stand 
it. I wouldn’t ! And if I were Mr. Welwyn I 
shouldn’t much like this violent friendship 
with Mrs. Greenlaw. — Harold ! Harold I ” 

She broke off, for Harold was fighting 
with Dick. They were dodging round and 
round a hay-cock, getting in a punch or a 
drive at one another when they felt they 
could do so with safety, in quite a business- 
like manner. 


160 




“ You get hold of Dick and I will catch 
Harold,” cried Mrs. Peacock, starting off 
at a run. 

I stayed where I was. I was not par- 
ticularly anxious to interfere just at that 
point, for I know what an aggravating child 
Harold is, and how these little skirmishes 
almost always begin. 

My father’s got a motor-car,” he says 
in an aggressive tone. And Dick, whose 
father hasn’t even a toy engine, can only 
retort with his fists. 

Harold had a baby brother a year or so 
ago, and he used him in the same way to 
make Dick feel his inferiority. It was so 
galling that the poor child came home and 
requested me to supply him with a baby 
brother immediately, and if Harold’s had 
not died, I hardly know what I should have 
done. 

Now it is the motor-car, and I shall be 
thankful when next term comes and Har- 
old goes to school. 

Mrs. Peacock succeeded in capturing 
Harold, who was getting the worst of it, 
while I was hesitating, and at this moment 
Mrs. Manners came up to me and said : 

151 


J^ousfetoitjes; of (Eoenrioe 


The children are getting a little wild. 
Don’t you think we had better start a 
game ! — Tiny ! Ivy ! Podge ! ” 

Her three little ones were sitting rather 
heavily on Mr. Green’s body, and Amabelle 
and Phyllis on his head. 

We had some difficulty in collecting the 
whole party, but we managed it at last and 
suggested a game. 

‘‘What shall we play? Hunt the slip- 
per? Oranges and lemons? French and 
English?” suggested Dr. Peacock. 

“ I want to play ‘ I sent a letter to my 
love,’ ” Amabelle said immediately, with 
such an air of decision that all the other 
children fell in with her idea like a flock of 
sheep. 

“ But the words are so senseless ! ” said 
Mrs. Peacock. “ I don’t know where they 
learn these silly games.” 

“ It’s a beauty game ! ” said Amabelle, 
pouting. 

‘‘I carried water in my glove, 

I sent a letter to my love, 

I dropped it once, I dropped it twice, 

I dropped it all three times 1” 

chanted Podge. 


152 


SL CibiUren’0 part^ 


“What do you do then?” asked Mrs. 
Greenlaw. 

“ You all stand in a ring, and somebody 
runs round with a handkerchief and flicks 
once, twice, three times, and then runs,” 
cried Tiny. 

“ And the one what catches her takes 
the hankshuft and ^ carries water in her 
glove,’ ” said Amabelle. 

“ What a pretty game ! I think these old 
words are delightful — so inconsequent and 
absurd. Fancy carrying water in a glove 
and dropping a letter to your love, not once, 
but three times ! ” said Mrs. Greenlaw, 
laughing. 

The children were already forming the 
ring. 

“ I never saw anything absurd about it,” 
I said gaily. “ Of course one wouldn’t 
choose to carry water in a glove if one had 
a pail. But I have always had a very clear 
vision of the lady, walking a few paces 
ahead of her lover, with the letter, and 
dropping it once, twice, to pick it up before 
he could reach it, the third time dropping 
it in earnest and running away.” 

Mrs. Greenlaw darted an intelligent 
153 


of CEOenrior 


glance at me. ‘‘ I see now,^^ she said smil- 
ing. 

Come, Mrs. Greenlaw ! Come, Mrs. 
Howard- Jones and Mrs. Welwyn! You 
must all play. Every one is bound to play,’^ 
called Dr. Peacock from the ring. 

We joined in, and the game proceeded 
with a great deal of vigour, the grown-up 
people playing with at least as much spirit 
as the children. Mrs. Peacock^s looks 
showed that she considered Mr. Green 
guilty of an indiscretion in touching Mrs. 
Greenlaw with the handkerchief, hut her 
face relaxed when Mrs. Greenlaw, having 
caught Mr. Green, touched Harold and did 
not allow herself to he easily caught hy 
him. 

I have not seen Mr. Green and Mrs. 
Greenlaw together (except through the 
privet hedge) since the day when I was in 
the fields with the children, and it amused 
me to notice how self-conscious he looked 
when he approached Mrs. Greenlaw and I 
was anywhere in her neighbourhood. How- 
ever, as I was careful to show no signs of 
intelligence, he soon ceased to suspect me 
of having played the part of eavesdropper, 
154 


3t Cl)ilDren'sf 


and his manner became more natural. 
Mrs. Greenlaw’s attitude was, as far as I 
could see, as perfectly easy and friendly 
towards him as towards any other member 
of the party. 

We played a variety of games, and at 
hunt the slipper, when we were all seated 
on the ground, I found that Amabelle had 
sidled close up to me. 

Mammy,” she said in a tragic whisper, 
there’s something hurting me dread- 
fuUy! ” 

“ Is it the slipper you are sitting on? ” I 
asked. 

No, it pricks.” 

I caught her up quickly. Visions of 
bees, wasps, even snakes, flew through my 
brain. There was nothing under her on 
the grass. As I lifted her, however, she 
rattled in a peculiar manner, and I was re- 
minded of the tea-set. It was, of course, 
broken into atoms in her pocket, and the 
jagged edges of the fragments, especially 
the broken spout of the tea-pot, had no 
doubt caused her considerable inconve- 
nience when she sat upon them. 

That comes of being naughty and 
11 155 


of (iDonxri^e 


keeping other little girls’ presents,” I said 
severely. 

I’ll be good and give it to Cecily now,” 
sobbed Amabelle. “ I will be good.” 

Too late,” I said, leaving her while I 
went to put the broken china in a place of 
safety, where the other children were not 
likely to be injured by it. 

When I came back I found Mrs. Green- 
law talking to the child, and Amabelle was 
smiling as only a child can smile, her lashes 
still wet with tears. I am afraid from a 
word or two that she let drop later that 
Mrs. Greenlaw promised her another little 
tea-set like the broken one for her very 
own. 

When the children had gone home, the 
grown - up people remained to supper. 
Candles were lighted on the table, but out- 
side the daylight lingered and the scent of 
the hay and of the flowers in the garden 
came in through the open windows as we 
sat and talked. Mrs. Greenlaw was the life 
and soul of the party ; Mr. Green, Mrs. Wel- 
wyn, Dr. Peacock, all hung on her every 
word, but she showed herself quite as gra- 
cious to Mrs. Peacock, to Howard, and to 
156 




Mr. Manners as to any one of lier particu- 
lar admirers. 

There was talk of the village cricket 
cliib, and she delighted Mr. Green by pro- 
posing to recite at the annual entertain- 
ment which is to be held shortly for its 
benefit. He was not quite so delighted, 
however, when she proposed that Dr. Pea- 
cock should recite a dialogue or act a little 
piece with her. 

“ My dear, you have no time to give to 
it,” Mrs. Peacock said to her husband. 

You haven’t a moment to learn a part. 
Remember you were up all last night again ! 
— Couldn’t you induce your brother to do 
something with you?” she asked, turning 
to Mrs. Greenlaw. 

“ I am afraid his time is too much taken 
up,” Mrs. Greenlaw answered promptly. 
“And I hear that the county member is 
going to introduce a star. Isn’t one star 
enough? Oughtn’t the rest of the enter- 
tainment to be the result of local effort? It 
should be an opportunity for the display of 
local talent, don’t you think? ” 

Of course we all agreed with her, for 
the party then assembled comprised all the 
157 


of CEoenrtoe 


local talent worth considering in the neigh- 
bourhood. 

Mrs. Peacock’s objection to her hus- 
band’s taking part was quickly disposed of, 
and before she could bring forward any 
other he had deftly turned the conversa- 
tion, and was explaining to us his views on 
education and deploring the lack of really 
modern schools. 

“ The great thing we have to do nowa- 
days,” he said, “ is to cultivate individual- 
ity. A child’s reasonable impulses should 
not be checked, or his natural feelings sup- 
pressed. What we want is men and women 
with ideas of their own, and our present 
system of education is calculated to pro- 
duce machines. I will not have my chil- 
dren made into machines ! I will not send 
my boy to a public school and through the 
regular mill. I am going to send him to a 
man who, I believe, will follow out my 
ideas.” 

Mrs. Greenlaw looked very much inter- 
ested, but she said nothing. 

‘‘I hope you will find it answer,” re- 
marked Mr. Manners very seriously. 
“ But for iny part, I believe in the mill. It 
158 


3L €\)il^vtn’fS |Dart^ 


brings out a boy’s best qualities — makes a 
man of him. Wbat it gets rid of is the 
chaff, nothing but the chaif.” (His two 
eldest boys are at present undergoing the 
process.) 

I quite agree with you,” remarked Mr. 
Green, who has been thoroughly well 
ground. I believe in a form of education 
that has stood the test of time.” 

Mrs. Manners turned to me. “Boys 
must follow the regular course ; there is no 
help for it. With girls it is different,” she 
said, looking with motherly pride at Chris- 
tina, whose education has been ruthlessly 
sacrificed to that of the boys. 

“What do you think of mixed educa- 
tion? ” asked Mrs. Greenlaw pleasantly of 
Dr. Peacock. “ I believe it works well in 
America.” 

“ I don’t think it will ever work on this 
side of the water, even if it is seriously at- 
tempted,” Dr. Peacock answered. “ It is a 
fad — simply a fad ! ” 

“If we cannot have mixed education,” 
I began, “ I should like to turn the tables 
and send all the boys to the girls’ schools 
and all the girls to the boys’— teach the 
159 


W\)t of (Eoenjt^ioe 


girls the manly virtues and the boys the 
womanly.” 

There was, of course, a general laugh at 
such an outrageous idea, and every one 
began talking at once, airing his or her 
views on the subject. Mrs. Greenlaw, who 
was sitting just opposite to me, leaned 
towards me and said: 

am quite sure that you and I are 
agreed on the matter of the education of 
girls. We would teach them independence 
and cultivate their individuality on Dr. 
Peacock’s system and utterly discourage 
clinging y 

“ What’s that? What’s that? ” said Dr. 
Peacock, who had heard his name but had 
not caught what Mrs. Greenlaw had said. 

“ Why, it’s Harold ! ” exclaimed Mrs. 
Peacock suddenly, starting up from her 
chair. 

We all turned our eyes to the window, 
and outside on the dewy lawn, flitting about 
in his nightshirt, we saw Harold, a butter- 
fly-net in his hand, his eyes scanning the 
heavens. 

“ Oh, do go and bring him in ! He’ll 
catch his death,” said Mrs. Peacock in anx- 
160 


a CljiUren’flf ipart^ 


ious tones to her husband. Go out and 
tell him to come in at once.” 

“ Nonsense, nonsense, my dear. He 
won’t hurt ; it is quite a warm night. 
Now, what can be his idea in taking a but- 
terfly-net out with him at this hour ? Does 
he think he’ll catch a falling star?” Dr. 
Peacock was thoroughly interested in his 
son’s movements, and did not wish his wife 
to interfere with them. 

“ He is trying to catch a bat, don’t you 
see?” said his mother. “He has always 
been wanting to get out at night, and no 
doubt now he thought we were too much 
occupied to see him.” She hurried out into 
the garden, unable to contain herself any 
longer. 

Dr. Peacock laughed heartily. We all 
laughed, and finally, as his mother did not 
return, the whole party went out on to the 
lawn, and even into the hay-field, to assist 
Harold in his bat-hunt. 


161 


CHAPTER XII 


A VILLAGE ENTERTAINMENT 

“ The rural rout. 

All round about. 

Like bees came swarming thick to hear him sing/' 
Davidson's Poetical Rhapsody. 

We have an entertainment every sum- 
mer for the benefit of our village cricket 
club, and although I know that jealousy and 
ill-feeling are usual enough in other places 
among the performers on such occasions, at 
Edenrise we have always managed the 
affair with very little friction. Of course 
every one knows just what to expect : Mr. 
Manners recites, Christina plays the violin, 
the choir-hoys sing glees or catches, and 
Mr. Green a solo, generally The Lost Chord 
or To Anthea, phich the applause applaud 
vociferously in the hope that The Cat Came 
Back or the Pour-horse Char-a-hancs will 
follow as an encore. If the rector takes the 
chair the curate suppresses the comic ele- 
162 


a t^iUage Cntf rtainmenc 


ment and introduces an old English song 
in the place of our favourite Four-horse 
Char-a-bancs, but he does not really think 
it beneath his dignity to amuse his parish- 
ioners. Until lately he was proud of play- 
ing his own accompaniments, and it is only 
since Mrs. Greenlaw has been here that he 
has realized how much more effective a 
song may he when the singer stands and 
faces his audience, provided, of course, that 
he has faith in his accompanist. His sister, 
I suppose, came to the conclusion that he 
had too much faith in Mrs. Greenlaw, and 
she made up her mind that she would play 
for him at the public entertainment herself. 
At the rehearsal, however, she played so 
badly, thumping so many unexpected notes 
in the bass, that we were obliged to protest, 
and Mrs. Greenlaw was invited to take her 
place. The songs, with her spirited accom- 
paniment, went off with more than their 
usual eclat^ but Miss Green retired with 
rather a bad grace, and this has given rise 
to some little friction and a trifling coolness 
between them. It is not the matter of the 
accompaniment alone; there was already 
another reason for jealousy, for Miss 
163 


tE^^e i^ott£ieU)tije£( of d^oenrioe 


Green wrote a little piece for Mrs. Green- 
law and Dr. Peacock to act at the enter- 
tainment, and they rejected it on the 
ground that it was above the heads of the 
audience — too good, in fact. And the piece 
which they have substituted is, it is ru- 
moured, adapted by Mrs. Greenlaw herself. 

The night of the entertainment came, 
and if the affair did not go off as well as 
usual, I am sure it was because we erred in 
trying to introduce too many novelties into 
the programme and the audience did not 
know what to expect. The county member 
took the chair, and his portly womenkind, in 
resplendent evening dress, filled more than 
half the front row of seats at 2s. 6d. The 
rest of the schoolroom was packed with all 
our friends and neighbours, and all the 
farmers and villagers for miles around — 
every one who did, or did not, take an in- 
terest in the cricket club. Fathers and 
mothers with their whole families, down to 
the babe at the breast, were present. Youths 
and maidens conveniently squeezed togeth- 
er, two on a chair, were prepared to enjoy 
themselves to the utmost. If they did not 
prove such a sympathetic audience as usual, 
164 


31 tBillage (Entertainment 


I am convinced that it was not their fault, 
but the fault of the performers and of their 
choice of subjects. 

Mr. Manners, for instance, instead of 
reciting Calverley^s Water-Eat and the par- 
ody of Hiawatha, which have always gone 
otf so well, must needs select Browning’s 
How they brought the Good News from 
Ghent to Aix for this occasion, and I am 
bound to admit that he recited it with a great 
deal of spirit and intensity. It is a poem 
that I can never read without weeping, and 
I was choking hack my tears at the point 
where the good horse Eoland gallops into 
Aix, his rider laughing, shouting, making 
any noise, to encourage him, when Mr. 
Manners, who had raised his voice little by 
little, gave vent at last to a high-pitched 
hysterical laugh, and paused with a queer 
kind of sob in his throat. The rural part 
of the audience, hearing the laugh, and 
thinking something was expected of them, 
joined in in a tentative, mystified sort of 
way that wholly upset my gravity, and I 
was thankful to he able to laugh naturally 
at the next piece, which was encored three 
times. It was a catch by the choir-boys, 
165 


of (Eoenrtoe 


the words of which related to the inconve- 
niences arising from sitting down too heav- 
ily on a tin tack. 

The audience was warming np and our 
spirits rose in anticipation of the next item, 
the great event of the evening — a recitation 
by a London celebrity, whom the county 
member introduced with a few chaste words 
of praise. 

The celebrity arranged his cuffs and 
gazed steadily at his nails while we clapped 
furiously. Then, when silence had reigned 
for a full minute, he suddenly threw back 
his head, took one step forward, gazed 
fiercely round, and began, in a voice of con- 
centrated passion, to recite a piece of an ex- 
tremely gruesome nature, which I have 
never heard before, and have little wish to 
hear again. 

The dramatis personw consist of : 

1. The corpse of a beautiful woman; 

2. A Kaphael-faced priest, who has ad- 
ministered extreme unction; 

3. The husband of the dead woman; 

4. His dearest friend. 

It was, I assure you, a blood-curdling 
moment for us when the husband goes up 
166 


31 dBntertainntrnt 


in the darkness and, feeling about for his 
miniature on his dead wife’s breast, en- 
counters the warm hand of his dearest 
friend, who is also seeking for a portrait — 
his own! 

Just then, whether by design or acci- 
dent I do not know, the most brilliant of 
our schoolroom lamps began to flicker, 
burned low, and emitted a most horrible 
smell. Little Phyllis Peacock, who ought 
to have been in bed, burst into a dismal 
wail, in which several children at the back 
of the room joined. All this certainly 
added to the effect, and the feelings of the 
audience were so wrought up at the end of 
the piece that nobody knew whether to 
laugh or to cry when it was discovered that 
the portrait which the dead woman actu- 
ally wore on her breast was not the por- 
trait of her husband, or of his friend, but of 
the Raphael-faced priest! ! 

Everybody seemed to feel a little un- 
comfortable, and although we applauded 
as loudly as we could, the London celebrity 
was not encored, and we waited with a sigh 
of relief for the next piece on the pro- 
gramme. I say we, but personally, instead 
167 


of (Eocnrioe 


of giving vent to a sigh of relief, I felt a 
cold shudder run down my hack, for Dick 
was expected to appear to recite a little 
dialogue in French with Harold Peacock. 
I had all along had my doubts of Dick, and 
I began now to wish earnestly that I had 
been firm in refusing to allow him to ap- 
pear in public. 

When the pause grew ominously long 
and the audience showed signs of impa- 
tience I whispered to Howard to go and see 
what had happened. He went and found 
Dick barricaded in a corner behind the 
scenes, steadily refusing to move, while 
Toute Moralite desperately ejaculated; 
“ Courage, courage, mon enfant ! En 
avant ! En avant ! ” 

Howard joined in her threats and en- 
treaties, Dr. Peacock and Mrs. Greenlaw 
descended to bribes, but all to no purpose. 
Dick was firm, and Mr. Green was obliged 
to sing a song or two to fill the gap. I have 
often heard that stage fright is quite an 
uncontrollable passion, and I shall not al- 
low Dick to be punished, though I know 
how trying it was for Toute Moralite 
and Mrs. Peacock, who had been completely 
168 


31 ^aillage (H^ntertainment 


deceived by his swaggering air and appar- 
ent eagerness to perform. I shall be quite 
afraid to face them until the affair has 
blown over a little, for Harold would have 
done well enough, I daresay, if it had not 
been for Dick. 

I felt dreadfully cast down, but the last 
piece on the programme was of a refresh- 
ingly light nature, and was extremely well 
acted by Mrs. Greenlaw and Doctor Pea- 
cock, so that I was carried out of myself. 
But that again was new and a little too 
subtle for the rural audience, who could not 
understand how Dr. Peacock could bring 
himself to be rude to a lady and quarrel 
about an appointment in a photographer’s 
studio. I heard a running comment from 
the back of the room and remarks such as : 

Doctor ’ud never be’ave like that.” 

Oh, come now, doctor, let the lady go 
first ! ” 

And when the lady made a witty retort 
to a sally on the part of the gentleman : 

Well, she do seem a spitfire and quite 
able to hold her own, do Mrs. Greenlaw ! ” 

No one could fail to understand the 
denouement^ however, and we applauded 
169 




wildly when the lady and gentleman, who 
had accidentally come to be photographed 
at the same time, and had each refused to 
give way to the other, emerged from their 
respective dressing-rooms simultaneously, 
in fancy dress — ^he as Eomeo, she as Juliet ! 

The delighted photographer improvised 
a balcony and the two made a charming 
group, Mrs. Greenlaw looking really lovely 
in a white and gold gown of classic sim- 
plicity, while Dr. Peacock, in a wig and a 
flowing velvet cloak, knelt on one knee to 
kiss her hand. 

Mr. Green managed the lime-light and 
Mr. Manners the curtain, which unfortu- 
nately fell with a crash, pole and all, envel- 
oping him in its folds ! Mrs. Peacock, who 
had been shuffling uneasily in her seat be- 
hind me, brightened when she saw Eomeo 
and J uliet separate and endeavour to ex- 
tricate Mr. Manners, who was struggling 
among the foot-lights. 

“ Ah ! ” said Mrs. Peacock, when the 
smell of burning was becoming bearable, 
“it is perfectly plain that Mrs. Greenlaw 
has been on the stage. There is no question 
of it, and that accounts for everything. Our 
170 


31 tDillage entertainment 


chemist told me only yesterday that he was 
sure he had seen her in a London theatre. 
iUnfortunately, he had forgotten the name 
under which she appeared, and the name of 
the play in which he saw her act, but he 
thinks he will remember in a day or two.” 

“ I have no doubt he will if he tries,” I 
said. “ But isn’t she perfectly lovely? ” 

Mrs. Welwyn, who sat just in front, 
heard the remark, and turned a delighted 
face to me. 

Oh, it is the lime-light, you know, and 
of course she makes up well,” Mrs. Peacock 
remarked in an olfhand manner. I won- 
der she did not get her brother to act with 
her.” 

“ Dr. Peacock looked splendid, and I am 
sure no one could have done better. I did 
not know he was such an accomplished 
actor,” I said. 

Mrs. Peacock beamed upon me — she en- 
tirely forgot Dick for the moment — and I 
heard her shortly after congratulating Mrs. 
Greenlaw quite enthusiastically. Outside 
the door when we were leaving, I overheard 
Miss Green telling a friend of hers that she 
had been against a curtain and lime-light 
12 171 


of €ntntisit 


from the first, and she considered drawing- 
room frivolities, such as the last piece, ex- 
tremely unsuitable for a village entertain- 
ment, the aim of which was not to amuse 
the jaded members of fashionable society, 
but to elevate, as well as to entertain, the 
people. 

“ At any rate,’’ Howard said when we 
were discussing the events of the evening 
in our own room, “ Mrs. Greenlaw does not 
pretend to elevate any one, and that is 
something to her credit in these days of 
earnest endeavour ! ” 

He kept chuckling at intervals long 
after he was in bed, and once he woke me 
up to confide to me an epitaph he had com- 
posed for Miss Green, which ran : 

‘‘ She sank into an early grave exhausted 
by her too earnest endeavours to elevate her 
contemporaries.^^ 

It will of course be in Latin, or Greek, 
or perhaps in Hebrew,” he added sleepily. 


172 


CHAPTER XIII 


AUNT JANE 

** She was an excellent person in every way — and won the 
respect feven of Mrs. Grundy; 

She was a good housewife, too, and wouldn’t have wasted 
a penny if she had owned the Koh-i-noor.” 

Bah Ballads. 

Aunt Jane came to see me this after- 
noon, and we got on together capitally, 
since domestic economy was hardly touched 
upon. We talked at first of the village en- 
tertainment, which she had been unable to 
attend. I gave her as graphic an account of 
it as I was able, not omitting Dick^s part in 
the proceedings, for Aunt Jane is quite 
equal to seeing the humorous side of such 
an affair, and of judging a child’s naughti- 
ness leniently. 

The cricket club led us on to talk of the 
curate, and then of his bees, and of a report 
that has reached us that he has lost more 
than one swarm this summer while he has 
173 




been playing croquet with Mrs. Greenlaw. 

All simply be let them go ! ” said Toute 
Moralite. 

Tant mienx!” said Aunt Jane, who 
has a great weakness for French phrases, 
and loves to let them off on me. 

She will say with a twinkle in her eye : 

“ I have a new French phrase, my dear. 
I don’t know how yon would pronounce it, 
but I know how I shall ! ” 

Her translation is often as original as 
her pronunciation, and I have heard her 
use demi-jour ” and demi-monde ” to 
signify ‘‘half the day” and ‘‘half the 
world,” while “ atfaires de coeur ” she 
takes to mean “ affairs at court.” 

“ Tant mee-u,” said Aunt Jane. “ So 
much the worse ! ” 

“ You mean ‘ tant pis,’ I think,” I said 
quite gravely. 

“ Certainly, that is what I mean, and I 
think that if a person undertakes to keep 
bees he should keep them, and not let them 
escape and swarm about the country while 
he is playing croquet.” 

“I daresay if he lost them, somebody 
else benefited,” I said, “ though I cannot 
174 


aunt 31 ane 


help hoping myself that those poor bees got 
clear away and are living their own lives 
free from human interference.” 

Aunt J ane laughed, and then quite sud- 
denly, after a brief silence, she fixed her 
penetrating eyes upon me and said : 

“What do you do with your candle- 
ends, my dear 1 ” 

“ Burn them, I think,” I stammered, for 
somehow I am never ready with suitable 
answers to such questions. 

“You think? That means, I suppose, 
that they are burned in the kitchen fire! 
Never allow the least thing to be wasted in 
a house, my dear ; there is a use for every- 
thing — bacon fat, for example, what do you 
do with it! Do you have every hit run 
down and clarified! ” 

“ Oh, yes. Aunt J ane, I told Martha to 
do it after you spoke of it the last time.” 

“ See that it is done yourself, and, what- 
ever you do, don’t leave everything to serv- 
ants, and drive the rag and bone man from 
the door! A policy of lazy-fair will not 
do in housekeeping, remember,” she said 
firmly, but quite good-naturedly, emphasiz- 
ing the French phrase with a nod. She has 
176 


of (EDenrior 


seen too much of the world to expect young 
people to follow her advice. She gives it 
from a sense of duty, in a crisp, decided 
manner, and regards them with a humorous 
leniency when they fail to profit by it. 

I was glad to turn the conversation 
away from household matters, and fortu- 
nately just then Mrs. Greenlaw’s graceful 
form was discernible for a moment among 
the trees in her garden. 

“ I do not approve of her ! ” Aunt Jane 
said with a little jerk of her head. Or of 
her conduct. Marriage is not given for 
our pleasure, but to chasten us. She may be 
the injured party, I don’t say that she isn’t, 
but when you take a husband you take him 
^ for better, for worse,’ and the worse he is 
the more it is your duty to cleave to him. 
I despise, and I always have despised, a 
person who leaves a sinking ship.” 

“ The woman is the weaker vessel. Aunt 
J ane, and we really have no reason to sup- 
pose Mrs. Greenlaw’s husband was a sink- 
ing ship when she left him — or he left ?ier,” 
I remarked guardedly. 

That is my idea of him, however,” she 
said with her usual decision. Of course, 

ire 


aunt 3|ane 


I am quite civil to Mrs. Greenlaw when I 
meet her, but I do not in the least approve 
of her conduct. / cling to the marriage 
laws and to the prayer-book, and John shall 
vote for the member that supports them.” 

She closed her mouth firmly, and the 
grapes and butterflies on her bonnet quiv- 
ered as she jerked her head. It is quite 
impossible to argue with Aunt Jane on 
some subjects, and I did not attempt it now, 
and, as it happened. Miss Green came in at 
that moment. 

Tea was brought, and as I poured it out 
I amused myself with the contrast between 
the two women, the old-fashioned house- 
wife and the new. Miss Green is under 
thirty, spare, modern, colourless, correct in 
a coat and skirt which have a faint sugges- 
tion of a clerical cut about them, and the 
severest head-gear — her whole costume 
contrasting strikingly with Aunt Jane’s 
beaded mantle and many-hued bonnet. 

If Uncle John had only possessed his 
wife’s originality and decision of character 
he would have been a successful man. If 
Mr. Green had his sister’s love of learning 
and extraordinary memory, he would make 
177 


turtle of Contrisfe 


a name as a preacher, and doubtless end an 
archbishop. Either of these men would 
have made really admirable women. So 
Providence loves to sport with us! 

We talked idly while my mind wandered 
in this way, and I soon began to notice that 
Miss Green’s eyes were constantly turned 
in the direction of the croquet-lawn next 
door, and her next words showed whither 
her thoughts were tending. 

Do you play croquet with your neigh- 
bour often?” she asked me. 

‘^I? Oh, no; very seldom. I am so 
very busy looking after my domestic af- 
fairs. It takes me all my time to save my 
candle-ends, and even then I only half do 
it,” I said, looking at Aunt J ane and laugh- 
ing. 

“If you poke fun at me I shall tell 
Howard,” said Aunt Jane. “You will 
make Miss Green think that I am an old 
stick-in-the-mud, but I assure you. Miss 
Green, I am really nothing of the sort. It 
was more than a year ago that I said to my 
husband: ‘John, we must keep pace with 
the times! I refuse to be left behind. I 
don’t know what you propose to do, but I 
178 


3innt 31ane 


intend to take in tlie Strand Magazine and 
the Review of Reviews. One must know a 
little of what is going on in the world ! ’ ” 

“ Does Uncle John read them? ” I asked. 

Well, no, my dear ; he says he prefers 
the Vicar of Wakefield and Gulliver’s 
Travels, and if I ask him what he thinks of 
the Conduct of the War, or the Condition 
of China, he only says, ‘ Lamentable, quite 
lamentable, my dear,’ and there’s an end of 
it. John never will argue.” 

I could not help smiling, and Miss 
Green said approvingly: 

Swift and Goldsmith are excellent 
reading, but one should study the moderns 
as well — Browning, Ibsen and the rest.” 

Oh, I know you, with your Ibsens and 
your Matterlinks and your White Wait- 
mans ! ” said Aunt J ane, shaking her head 
at Miss Green. English Literature for 
English readers I say, though there is no 
harm in knowing what is going on in other 
countries. It broadens one’s outlook and 
confirms one in one’s own opinions — ‘in- 
sular prejudices ’ perhaps you would call 
them.” 

Aunt Jane’s eyes twinkled as Miss 
179 


®l)e of (EOenrioe 


Green cleared her throat and began her 
endeavour to convince the elder woman of 
the narrowness of her views, but just then 
we heard the tapping of croquet-balls and 
saw that Mrs. Greenlaw was beginning a 
game with the curate, and Miss Green, sud- 
denly dropping her argumentative tone, 
said apologetically : 

‘‘ My brother is so fond of croquet.” 

A very healthy exercise, and not too 
violent,” said Aunt Jane with ready tact. 
‘‘ People are so apt to overdo it with exer- 
cise. I always say that cricket, football 
and tennis, as they are played now, are 
only fit for acrobats ! ” Aunt Jane gave 
that little decided movement of the head 
with which she concludes and dismisses an 
argument. 

But exercise is so good for one,” said 
Miss Green. I never feel well unless I 
take a great deal.” 

‘‘ Depend upon it, you would feel a great 
deal better if you took less,” remarked 
Aunt Jane, with decision. “ No young 
people are well nowadays, and the reason 
is that they do nothing but take exercise. 
They bicycle, dance, play tennis and 
180 


aiunt 3!ane 


hockey from morning to night; they ruin 
their complexions, and leave no time to 
cultivate the domestic virtues. Look at my 
niece there ! She laughs at me and pokes 
fun at the domestic virtues ! ” 

Aunt Jane smiled indulgently at me as 
she spoke, and Miss Green looked a trifle 
annoyed as she said dryly: 

A little common sense and a cookery 
hook is all that a woman requires to man- 
age a house, and I, for one, can work my 
brain a thousand times better if I take 
plenty of exercise.” 

‘‘Your brain works no better because 
your body is jaded, and brains are very 
necessary to manage a house properly. 
Don’t forget that,” said Aunt Jane, looking 
disapprovingly at Miss Green’s thin figure 
and sallow complexion. 

“ It is no use trying to convince you of 
the importance of exercise. I must really 
go in and see Mrs. Greenlaw now. I have 
owed her a call for ages,” Miss Green said, 
rising. “ She was not at home when I came 
in here.” 

I had my reasons for doubting Mrs. 
Greenlaw’s absence from home at that time, 
181 




but I clearly understood Miss Green’s 
reasons for spending so much time on my 
side of the hedge. 

“ A very modern, sensible young wom- 
an,” said Aunt Jane, nodding in the direc- 
tion of Miss Green’s retreating figure. 
“ Rather determined in her own opinions, 
but I see she looks after her brother well.” 

“ She thinks him too friendly with Mrs. 
Greenlaw,” I said. 

We watched her join the croquet-play- 
ers, and we observed that Mrs. Greenlaw 
greeted her effusively and her brother 
somewhat coldly. She played with two 
balls against them, and we heard her voice 
raised in protest when Mr. Green insisted 
that Mrs. Greenlaw’s ball was through the 
second hoop, when evidently a large por- 
tion remained on the other side. 

Aunt Jane regarded them in silence, 
grimly nodding her head. 

“ What is she doing here ” she said 
abruptly at last. 

“Who*? Miss Green! ” 

“No, the golden-haired lady.” 

“ Oh, I don’t know; it is no use asking 
me. She lives here for the same reason 
182 


aiunt 3(lane 


that we all live here, I suppose. Edenrise 
is healthy, gravel soil, convenient distance 
from town, fairly cheap, and with extraor- 
dinary social opportunities, while for her 
it has the additional advantage of the ab- 
sence of her husband.’’ 

She won’t be here long,” said Aunt 
Jane, waiving my reasons. 

“We shall never be able to do without 
her now,” I said, “ and I’m sure she will not 
have the heart to tear herself away in the 
winter when we begin our singing practices 
and literary gatherings.” 

“ A woman like that will not amuse her- 
self long with a parcel of women. Mark 
my words ! ” Aunt J ane remarked curtly. 

“We are not all women,” I said indig- 
nantly. “ There are plenty of men here. 
There are our husbands ; she has a brother, 
who comes to see her from time to time; 
and then there is the curate.” 

“Humph!” said Aunt Jane, tapping 
her foot impatiently oh the gravel, while 
her eyes rested on the kneeling figure of 
the young man, who was arranging his sis- 
ter’s ball a little too artfully for Mrs. 
Greenlaw to croquet, while Miss Green 
183 


of (II;0ntrior 


(who is not always good-tempered at cro- 
quet and Shakespeare-readings and such 
games of skill) stood by scowling and chip- 
ping little bits out of the lawn with her 
mallet. 

I have observed for some time a tend- 
ency on Miss Greenes part to insist that 
her brother is not really on intimate terms 
with Mrs. Greenlaw. I have also observed 
what a peculiarly irritating effect croquet 
seems to have on the temper! Mrs. Pea- 
cock never looks happy when she is playing 
with her husband and Mrs. Greenlaw, and 
only yesterday, when Mr. and Mrs. Wel- 
wyn were there, I noticed that Mr. Welwyn 
stood aloof, hacking holes in the gravel 
path, while his wife and Mrs. Greenlaw 
knelt and plotted against him on the grass. 

I have, in fact, come to the conclusion 
that croquet is a game for two — though 
occasionally perhaps four very exceptional 
persons may play together happily enough, 
for the Manners family seem able to enjoy 
themselves when they play with Mrs. 
Greenlaw. I heard their cheerful voices 
the other evening and the laughter of 
Christina, and, looking through the privet 
184 


3iunt 3Iane 


hedge, I saw that Mr. Manners had hung 
his muffler on a rose-bush and would not 
be persuaded that the grass was damp, 
while Mrs. Greenlaw and Christina abetted 
him in his reckless disregard of the rules of 
hygiene as laid down by his wife. Mrs. 
Manners regarded all three with her indul- 
gent smile, and, watching her opportunity, 
took the muffler from the rose-tree and tied 
it firmly round the neck of her unresisting 
husband. But the Manners family are 
exceptional people. I do not believe that 
even chess or golf — games which never fail 
to rouse my worst passions — would upset 
their serenity for a single moment. 


185 


CHAPTER XrV 


MRS. GREENLAW AND THE FANCY FfiTE 

“She works by charms, by spells, by the figure, and 
such daubery as this is beyond our element .” — Merry Wives 
of Windsor. 

The last two days have been days of 
great excitement in Edenrise, for we have 
been holding a fancy Fete in the County- 
member’s grounds. 

It was not very long after Mrs. Green- 
law settled here that we came to the con- 
clusion that we must do something to raise 
money for church purposes, and a few of 
us met informally at Mrs. Peacock’s to dis- 
cuss the question. 

Miss Green made a little sort of speech, 
from which we gathered that though she 
personally disapproved of bazaars, yet she 
was strongly in favour of advancing her 
brother in his profession, and money being 
necessary to endow the church and make 
186 


iFanc^ SfHt 


him a vicar, money must be made by any 
legitimate means. 

‘‘Must it be a bazaar?” asked Mrs. 
Manners, coming at once to the point. “ I 
do not like bazaars myself, though of course 
I know that money can be got by them that 
one cannot get in other ways.” 

“ True,” remarked Miss Green. “ And 
why sane people will buy a thing they do 
not want, giving twice its market value for 
it at a bazaar, when they decline to sub- 
scribe the same money direct to the cause, 
remains a mystery to me.” 

“It is one of the little weaknesses of 
human nature,” said Mrs. Greenlaw, “ and 
in a case like this one is justified in taking 
advantage of such failings ! ” 

“ I think,” said Mrs. Peacock decidedly, 
“ that bazaars have bad their day. Besides, 
we are busy people with little time or 
money to spend in accumulating elegant 
trifles.” 

“ To purchase them ourselves at exor- 
bitant prices or see them sacrificed in penny 
dips,” I said. 

“ When I go to a bazaar I make a point 
of buying something really useful,” said 
13 187 




Mrs. Manners. One can generally get 
black-lead or dusters or something of that 
kind, and if one does pay more for them, 
one has a little something to show for one^s 
money.” 

I get eatables if I can, especially if I 
know where they come from,” said Mrs. 

, Welwyn. 

“ I got some wonderful pinafores at the 
Northgreen Temperance bazaar,” said Mrs. 
Manners ; “ they were quite cheap, and Ivy 
is wearing them still, but that was a most 
unusual piece of luck.” 

What do you think of an old English 
Fete instead of a bazaar! ” suggested Mrs. 
Greenlaw modestly. It could be held in 
the open air, with a May-pole and appropri- 
ate costumes.” 

“ What a splendid idea ! ” said Mrs. 
Peacock enthusiastically; “I wonder I 
never thought of it! The County-mem- 
ber’s grounds will be the very thing. 
There is a bowling-green and formal gar- 
dens and peacocks. Nothing could be 
better!” 

“ I have an idea, too,” said Mrs. Green- 
law, still more modestly, “ that a Labyrinth, 
188 


iFanc^ iFIte 


with a witch in a bower at the end, would 
prove a great attraction.” 

Mrs. Peacock was delighted, and, as it 
happened, the County-member had what he 
called a Labyrinth — a sort of dell over- 
grown with trees and ferns and interlaced 
with intricate paths. 

“ Will he lend his grounds 1 ” asked 
Mrs. Greenlaw. It seems almost too good 
to be true.” 

Of course he will,” answered Mrs. 
Peacock decidedly ; it will be such an op- 
portunity for him to show his new place otf . 
He will be delighted.” 

“ Will the rector approve, do you 
think?” asked Miss Green. 

“ It will be just like him if he doesn^t ! ” 
said Mrs. Peacock. “ Oh, I beg your par- 
don, Mrs. Greenlaw. I forgot he was a rela- 
tive of yours.” 

Don^t mention it,” said Mrs. Green- 
law, smiling most graciously. 

“ Do you propose to charge for admis- 
sion to the Fete or whatever it is ? ” asked 
Miss Green. 

“ Certainly,” answered Mrs. Peacock ; 
“ two and sixpence and tea thrown in — a 
189 


of Ctienrioe 


really nice tea, long tables spread under the 
trees.” 

“ With cakes and ale, not tea, if it is to 
be an old English Fete,” said Mrs. Green- 
law. 

“Capital!” said Mrs. Welwyn. “Tea 
wouldn’t be a bit appropriate.” 

“ It would be an anachronism. But 
people will want tea all the same,” said 
Miss Green coldly. 

“ The witch might dispense it from her 
bower in the labyrinth,” I suggested. 

“We can call it a ‘ philtre,’ ” said Mrs. 
Welwyn. 

“ But who will act the part of the witch? 
I am sure I couldn’t,” said Mrs. Peacock. 

“ Nor I,” said Mrs. Manners. 

“ Nor I,” said Miss Green. 

“Mrs. Greenlaw will do it to perfec- 
tion,” I said. 

“I am sure she will,” said Mrs. Wel- 
wyn, looking delighted ; “ she understands 
palmistry and everything.” 

“After all, I am afraid it is rather a 
frivolous way of getting money. A bazaar 
seems to me a comparatively serious affair. 
No fancy dress would be necessary, and I 
190 


iFanc^ iFIte 


think an old hook stall would he something 
quite new,” Miss Green remarked. 

“ Fancy dress is simply indispensable 
at a bazaar now, and as for a book stall, it 
was tried the other day — didn’t draw a 
bit I” said Mrs. Peacock. ‘‘No, we must 
have a Fete. It will require hardly any 
preparation, and every one will come from 
miles and miles around — say we get five 
hundred people at half-a-crown a head.” 

“ Children half-price,” put in Mrs. 
Manners. 

“ That is only a little over sixty pounds, 
and then there are expenses,” said Miss 
Green. 

We felt a good deal cast down, and there 
was a silence while we made mental calcula- 
tions, for we were all perfectly certain that 
five hundred two and sixpences must make 
more than sixty pounds. At last Mrs. Pea- 
cock — tired of mental arithmetic— said 
cheerfully : 

“ There loill be no expenses, for we shall 
get people to give all that is necessary. 
And we shall charge extra for the labyrinth 
and the fortune-teller. Mrs. Howard- 
Jones must be the fortune-teller.” 

191 


of COenrioe 


No, indeed,” I said with decision. 
‘^Mrs. Greenlaw is the only person who 
could do it.” 

Mrs. Peacock puckered her brow and 
maintained a solemn silence for a moment, 
and I was not surprised when she said sud- 
denly, as though the idea had just struck 
her as a brilliant one: 

^‘We have not seriously considered a 
Jumble Sale. I have got lots of things I 
want to get rid of.” 

‘^And so have I,” said Mrs. Manners; 
^‘but at a Jumble Sale one cannot sell 
any article for more than threepence, and 
five hundred, or even a thousand, three 
pences are less than five hundred half- 
crowns.” 

Gymkhanas and bicycle races are 
very popular just now,” said Mrs. Green- 
law. 

‘‘Don’t you think an Elizabethan play 
really well acted in the open air, would be 
much more entertaining and instructive ? ” 
suggested Miss Green. 

“Yes; but there are practical difficul- 
ties,” said Mrs. Greenlaw. “ The expenses 
of the stage and the dresses would be con- 
192 


iFanc^ JFete 


siderable, and even good actors cannot 
make their voices carry in the open air. 
We should have people demanding their 
money back because they had not been able 
to hear a word.” 

Well, time is flying,” I remarked, 
and I think we ought to settle something. 
I vote for the old English Fete.” 

‘‘ So do I,” said Mrs. Welwyn heartily. 

And I,” said Mrs. Manners. 

If we carry it out in a proper spirit 
it may be made really interesting historic- 
ally,” said Miss Green, coming round to the 
side of the majority ; quite a peep into the 
rural life of the England of two hundred 
years ago.” 

« There must be Old English songs sung 
at intervals. Christina will have to sing 
and play the violin. She can have a short- 
waisted frock — white, with blue ribbons,” 
said Mrs. Peacock, turning to Mrs. Man- 
ners. 

I would rather Christina did not take 
a prominent part,” said Mrs. Manners 
doubtfully. 

Nonsense! ” said Mrs. Peacock; “ she 
is just of an age to enjoy herself, and she 
193 


l^ous^etDtbeflf of (COenrioe 


will look charming. I shall let my children 
go, and they shall sell nuts and sweets.” 

‘‘Did you notice that I was not very 
anxious for Christina to take any part in 
the proceedings 1 ” Mrs. Manners said to me 
as we walked home together. 

“ Yes, but you are too modest,” I said. 
“ She plays the violin remarkably well.” 

“ It is not exactly modesty,” said Mrs. 
Manners, hesitating. “ In fact — the truth 
is — that I am afraid she is getting too fond 
of Mr. Green. She is quite put out if she 
misses a singing practice, and she has been 
going to early communion much more often 
lately than she used to do.” 

“Have you talked to Christina about 
it?” I asked. 

“ What an idea ! It is the last thing I 
should think of doing. It might put ideas 
into her head.” 

“ Don^t you think that Christina already 
has ideas in her head! ” 

“ That may he,” said Mrs. Manners 
evasively, “ hut you do think it wise not to 
throw her too much into Mr. Green’s so- 
ciety, don’t you! ” 


194 


tirtie iFanc^ iFete 


Yes, certainly, especially as Mr. Green 
seems rather taken np with onr friend Mrs. 
Greenlaw just now.” 

cannot wonder at that,” said Mrs. 
Manners in her generous way. 

The weather has been perfect and the 
Fete a brilliant success. The County-mem- 
ber threw open his grounds and his women- 
kind flung themselves heart and soul into 
the business, supplying cakes and ale ad 
libitum, as well as arranging a stage and 
acting appropriate scenes at intervals dur- 
ing the day. 

We had a May-pole on the Bowling- 
green, dancing, racing, and processions of 
revellers. And a very attractive scene the 
Fete presented, if not so historically cor- 
rect as Miss Green would have wished. 

At any rate,” Mrs. Peacock remarked 
proudly to me as we stood a little aloof to 
get the general effect, I am sure there is 
nothing Victorian about it I ” 

What about croquet — and the cu- 
rate*? ” I said, laughing, for Mr. Green was 
engaged in his favourite pastime, attired 
in his ordinary clerical costume, and his 
195 




partner, tlie County-member’s daughter, in 
that of a particularly overdressed shep- 
herdess. 

Croquet doesn’t look much more mod- 
ern than bowls, if it comes to that,” said 
Mrs. Peacock, and she turned her admiring 
eyes to Harold, who sat piping on a penny 
whistle under a tree. He was dressed in 
blue, with a very short waist and countless 
buttons on his garments, and he piped hid- 
eously to a charming little circle of Bo- 
peeps and little Eed Eiding-Hoods, Jack 
Horners, and Fairy-godmothers. 

The sucess of the day was, however, the 
Labyrinth, and everything else fell flat in 
comparison. People kept going in, and 
coming out only to watch their opportunity 
of going in again, cheerfully paying their 
shillings each time. The curate, I observed, 
went in oftener than any one else, but he 
undoubtedly had the cause more at heart 
than the rest of us. We allowed each per- 
son five minutes before we permitted the 
next to enter the Labyrinth to consult the 
witch. I stood taking the money at the en- 
trance and Howard remained at my side in 
the blazing sun, declining to penetrate into 
196 


iFanc^ jfitt 


the shade of the laurels or follow the allur- 
ing little path which was quickly lost to 
sight among trees and ferns. 

Mrs. Peacock hovered suspiciously 
round us, refusing to go in herself to try 
her fate, but intercepting every one who 
came out and questioning them minutely. 
Her husband’s answers to her questions 
were evasive and did not satisfy her. 

Go in yourself, my dear. It is well 
worth your while,” he said. 

And on being further pressed as to what 
had happened in the Labyrinth, he said that 
it was all a hoax — there was no witch there 
at all ; and if it had not been for the good of 
the cause he should have regretted the shil- 
ling he had expended. 

“ Aren’t you going in! ” he asked, turn- 
ing to Howard with something nearly ap- 
proaching a wink. 

‘‘No; I am afraid of what I might 
hear,” Howard said, looking at me and 
smiling. 

“ It might be something to your advan- 
tage — who knows! ” said the doctor in his 
jovial manner. 

Mrs. Peacock pounced upon Christina 
197 


turtle of (EOenrifi^e 


Manners, who came out at that moment 
with a radiant smile on her face, and elic- 
ited from her the information that the witch 
was perfectly wonderful.” She was 
dressed in white and the bower was almost 
dark except for a faint light from a lamp 
on which a caldron was boiling, and the 
witch had displayed a most extraordinary 
insight into things past, present, and to 
come. Mrs. Peacock looked grave, but 
when Harold and another child had come 
out, joyfully displaying boxes of sweets 
which the witch had given them, she was 
heard to admit that Mrs. Greenlaw was, 
after all, a woman of tact, and might per- 
haps possess some little insight into char- 
acter. When, however, Mr. Green had en- 
tered for the third time, and the County- 
member — ^who looked slightly flustered — 
had told her that the witch was dressed in 
black, her golden hair loose about her 
shoulders, a blue light imparting a weird 
pallor to her face, Mrs. Peacock began 
to show unmistakable signs of nervous- 
ness. 

“I never approved of this Labyrinth 
business,” she said to me. I wish to good- 
198 


iFanc^ iFete 


ness we had never countenanced the thing ! 
It makes me creep.” 

u There can’t be any harm in it ; and we 
are simply coining money ! ” I said reas- 
suringly. Go in and see for yourself.” 

“You go; I will take the money for 
you.” 

“Very well, Pll go with pleasure,” I 
said, giving her my shilling and starting 
off willingly enough. 

Beneath the grateful shade of the trees 
I encountered “ Toute Moralite.” 

“ Est-ce que vous vous plaisiez 1^ 
dedans ? ” I asked. 

“ Mais, non, cela ne m’amusait pas du 
tout,” she said shortly, shrugging her 
shoulders. 

I proceeded calmly on my way along the 
little winding path which curled round and 
round among the trees. There was a 
smell of dampness, a ferny, green smell, 
which proved very grateful to my senses 
after the heat and glare outside. I sat 
down on a mossy stone and thought of lin- 
gering there for five minutes and then re- 
turning without trying to find the witch’s 
bower. Fanciful ideas of what I might tell 
199 


®lie l^ousfefcDitiefif of (Eoenrioe 


Mrs. Peacock ran through my brain! I 
dismissed them as unworthy, and a moment 
after I found myself at the entrance to the 
bower. It is a rustic arbour made of oak 
logs, and placed as it is in a thick shrub- 
bery, there is very little light inside even 
on the brightest day. Mrs. Greenlaw had 
taken advantage of this. She was sitting 
on a stone in the middle of the bower, bend- 
ing over a caldron. A hood covered her 
head and her face was half hidden, while a 
blue light from the lamp cast a ghastly bril- 
liance around her. She looked up and 
smiled when she saw me, throwing back her 
hood and displaying her beautiful hair. 

“ Since you have come, I can take a little 
holiday, and we will have a cup of tea,” she 
said cheerfully. To tell you the truth, I 
am getting a little tired of acting the 
witch.” 

She placed a stool for me to sit upon, 
and while we drank our tea I could not re- 
sist expressing my admiration at her ex- 
traordinary talent for play-acting. 

I must say I have been enjoying my- 
self,” she said. “I feel quite in my ele- 
ment.” 


200 


iFanc^ jfitt 


‘‘ I think you have the best of it, it 
is so cool and pleasant here. The sun and 
the brilliant colours outside hurt one’s 
eyes.” 

“ The fun of it is that this sort of thing 
gives one an opportunity of saying things 
that are not permissible under ordinary 
circumstances,” she remarked, smiling 
archly. “ Shall I tell you your fortune, or 
shall I sketch your character from the lines 
on your hands ? ” 

She held out her hand. I withdrew 
mine quickly. 

“ I am much more interested in the char- 
acters and fortunes of other people,” I said. 
“ Now, what did you tell ‘ Toute Moral- 
iter” 

Mrs. Greenlaw laughed. 

Oh, nothing at all ! Just one or two 
things about the chemist, mentioning no 
names, of course! Then I happened to 
read on her hand that Zola was her favour- 
ite author, and that seemed to annoy her. 
I did not think she would even have heard 
of Zola.” 

I smiled, and she went on. 

‘ Toute Moralite ’ is a sensible woman. 

201 


of dEOenrtoe 


She adopts Mrs. Peacock’s views on every 
possible subject. As Mrs. Peacock thinks 
I am a dangerous woman, she thinks so, 
too, and is ready to suspect me of almost 
any crime ! ” She laughed. 

Mrs. Peacock is a little unreasonable 
on some subjects,” I remarked. 

“ It is really very foolish of her, for she 
must know that Dr. Peacock is bound to 
flirt with some one. She might reflect that 
on the whole he could not have a safer per- 
son to flirt with than me ! ” 

She watched me as she spoke to see how 
I took the remark. I made no sign. 

“ He is the only person I have really had 
to seriously snub to-day,” she added. 

I thought he was not impressed with 
your supernatural powers,” I said thought- 
fully. “ Mr. Green seems to have much 
more faith in them, and he has consulted 
you often enough to form an opinion.” 

‘‘Yet I have told him some real home 
truths — kindly, of course,” she said. 

“ You must have done it very kindly. I 
thought, too, that Christina Manners looked 
particularly happy when she came away,” I 
remarked. 


202 


®i^e iFanc^ iFrte 


One can read a child like that as easily 
as a book, and it costs nothing to make one- 
self agreeable in such a case. It takes so 
little to make a child happy ! ” 

“ True,” I said, and I was going on to 
ask if she had given or intended to give the 
Welwyns the benefit of her advice, when 
Mrs. Greenlaw stopped me, and I became 
aware of the fact that Mrs. Welwyn was 
somewhere in the background, in attend- 
ance upon the witch. 

“ The innocence of some people and the 
stupidity of others irritates me ! ” Mrs. 
Greenlaw remarked in a low voice. 

“ My time is more than up and I shall be 
keeping others from consulting you,” I 
said, rising. Mrs. Peacock is only wait- 
ing until I come out.” 

I wish you would let me look at your 
hand,” she said as I turned to go. 

I shook my head and left her. 

'' Well, what did you see ? What did she 
tell you? ” Mrs. Peacock began eagerly the 
moment she caught sight of me. 

‘‘It is delightfully cool in the Laby- 
rinth,” I replied; “ and I got such a good 
cup of tea ! W onT you go now ? ” 

14 203 


l^ous^etotbes? of d^iienrior 


She lingered a few minutes and asked 
me several penetrating questions, but as the 
answers did not satisfy her, she put down 
her shilling in a determined manner and 
departed to investigate the Labyrinth her- 
self. 

In less than ten minutes I saw her com- 
ing out again in the company of Mr. Green, 
whom, she said, she had found wandering 
about in an aimless manner under the trees. 
G'He has found the back way ini” I 
thought to myself.) 

Well!” I said aloud. 

“ I hope we shall not incur odium with 
this childish business ! ” said Mrs. Peacock 
with some asperity. 

What did you see ? ” I asked. 

“ Nothing, nobody — only Mr. Green and 
Mrs. Welwyn, and the tea was cold!” she 
said, still more crossly. ‘‘As for Mrs. 
Greenlaw ” 

She stopped suddenly, for we became 
aware that that lady was advancing to meet 
us from the opposite direction, looking 
quite beautiful in a Shakespearian costume 
— the costume of a court lady, not that of a 
witch. 


204 


iFanc^ Sfitt 


“ You never came to see me in the Laby- 
rinth ! ” she said to Mrs. Peacock with her 
most gracious smile, “ and now Mrs. Wel- 
wyn has taken my place, and I am having a 
little rest from * fortune-telling.’ ” 

Mrs. Peacock hurried off, murmuring 
something about Harold. And Howard, who 
came up at that moment with Aunt Jane, 
proceeded to investigate the Labyrinth with 
her, remarking that though Aunt Jane did 
not take much stock in witches, she was 
very anxious to get a cup of tea. 

Aunt Jane attended the Fete just to 
show that she was not prejudiced, I sup- 
pose. I heard her agreeing with Miss 
Green that it was an innovation and that 
a time-honoured bazaar would have been 
much more suitable for the purpose. How- 
ever, she was there, and her curiosity hav- 
ing so far got the better of her prejudice, I 
think she thoroughly enjoyed herself. 
Much more than Miss Green did, for she 
was constantly coming round to inquire 
of me whether I had seen her brother 
during the last half-hour. She seemed 
so flustered and cross that at last I was 
irritated. 


205 




My reply to her question became 
mechanical. I told her each time a little 
more curtly than the last that I had seen 
him earlier in the day playing croquet with 
the County-member’s daughter. 


206 


CHAPTEE XY 

AUNT jane’s fortune 

“ How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! 

How pleasant it is to have money.” — Clough. 

At the beginning of August Howard 
and I took the children to the seaside, and 
all the information I received about our 
neighbours for six weeks was from Aunt 
Jane, who, with Uncle John, spent the holi- 
days in our house and garden. The Pea- 
cocks were away and so were Mr. and Miss 
Green, though the former returned to his 
duties on Sundays. On more than one oc- 
casion he had been known to play croquet 
with Mrs. Greenlaw between service hours, 
a proceeding of which Aunt Jane strongly 
disapproved. 

We all compared notes as to our holi- 
days when we came home, each one of us, 
of course, insisting on the superior attrac- 
tions of the particular place which she had 
207 


turtle Ixjibffl? of (Eoenrioe 


patronized. Mrs. Peacock said there was 
no air like the air of north Wales; I said 
there was no sea like the sea of north 
Devon. Mrs. Manners stood up for the 
Yorkshire moors and Miss Green enlarged 
on the joys of bicycling in France. Mrs. 
Peacock is, I believe, secretly determined 
to go to Devonshire for her holiday next 
summer, as I am seriously considering 
north Wales for ours, but we did not say so 
to each other — we were too busily engaged 
in impressing the advantages of the par- 
ticular health resort we had just visited on 
our neighbours. 

Mrs. Welwyn, who has been at home all 
the summer, agreed with Mrs. Greenlaw 
that it was far more restful and pleasant 
to stay in Edenrise than to take your fam- 
ily away to a crowded health resort in the 
month of August. 

Mr. Welwyn had left her while he took 
a short holiday, and she had been free to 
spend her time as she liked, so that, nat- 
urally enough, she spent it for the most 
part with Mrs. Greenlaw. 

I heard from Aunt Jane how they sat 
together under the trees in the garden. 

208 


aiunt 3|ane’fi iFortune 


How they worked and read in the heat of 
the day, playing croqnet in the cool of the 
evening or strolled together in the fields. 
Their solitude was enlivened from time to 
time by the presence of Mrs. Greenlaw^s 
brother, in whom Annt Jane was much in- 
terested. She told me that there was a re- 
port about that he was a cousin of Mrs. 
Greenlaw and not her brother. But the 
news, I found, came from Mrs. Peacock, 
who had it through ‘‘ Toute Moralite ” and 
the chemist; and gossip from that source 
began to weary me, especially when I re- 
flected that the last reports of the approach- 
ing advent of Mrs. Manners’s eighth child 
and of the engagement of Mr. Green to the 
Oounty-member’s daughter had proved to- 
tally unfounded. I have seen nothing of 
the gentleman myself during the whole 
month I have been back, and I determined 
to take no notice of the report. The chemist, 
I know, enjoys particular advantages in 
the village through the insight afforded 
him by the doctor into the characters and 
constitutions of his clients. He knows, for 
instance, when Mrs. Welwyn is hysterical 
because Dr. Peacock gives her valerian; 

209 


turtle ou£ieiott)eei of (Boenrtoe 


he knows that her children are given sugar 
and water, or something equally harmless, 
because their mother is nervous about 
them; and he knows what is really the 
matter with Mrs. Smith when Dr. Peacock 
tells her that she is suffering from dyspep- 
sia. Moreover, he is often consulted inde- 
pendently, and, I have reason to believe, he 
gives his opinion gratuitously on subjects 
ranging from burns and scars to delicate 
domestic difficulties between mistresses and 
servants — possibly even between husbands 
and wives. But I do not think he should 
retail everything he knows to the credulous 
“ Toute Moralite,” and I begin to wish that 
Mrs. Peacock had let her go when she gave 
notice the other day, though I do not agree 
with Howard that she has forgotten her 
own language and is unable to teach any 
other ! 

In fact, I am persuaded that Dick and 
Amabelle are getting on very well with her. 
Dick said the piece which he ought to have 
recited at the entertainment really very 
nicely, and only yesterday I heard him call 
Amabelle “ Crapaud ! diable ! Fleau de la 
maison ! ” with an excellent French accent, 
210 


jaunt pane’s? iFortune 


while Amabelle replied, with a funny little 
foreign shrug of her shoulders, “ Comme 
tu es bete, mon frere ! ” 

But though they are happy enough at 
their lessons I have not yet accustomed my- 
self to the unearthly silence that reigns in 
the house in the mornings, when I am dust- 
ing and tidying and doing the thousand 
nothings which fall to the housewife’s lot, 
and to which I have always found the chil- 
dren such a serious hindrance. 

My mind latterly has often reverted to 
Aunt Jane and to childless women in gen- 
eral. 

When I came down to breakfast this 
morning Howard was already at the table 
reading his letters. 

^^What do you think has happened?” 
he exclaimed as I came into the room. 

Is it good news ? ” I asked. 

He nodded. 

Then that miserable war is at an 

end.” 

“ Not a bit of it. Guess again.” 

“ I hate guessing, and I might go on for- 
ever,” I said crossly. “ I never could guess 
anything ! ” 


211 


of dEocnrioe 


“Very well, then, I will tell you,” he 
said, beaming all over. “ Uncle J ames is 
dead.” 

“ And left you a legacy*? ” I inquired. 

“ Five hundred — and five hundred will 
he handy enough to us — ^but Aunt Jane will 
have at least seven hundred pounds a year. 
.What do you think of that? ” 

“ 0 Howard ! ” I said. The tears came 
welling into my eyes, and I turned my head 
away, for somehow it struck me as so pa- 
thetic that Aunt J ane should have so much 
money now when she had lost her keen de- 
sire for it, and had succeeded, after years 
of struggle, in bringing her requirements 
down to suit her limited means. 

Howard looked curiously at me. I felt 
it, though my face was turned away from 
him. 

“ This is the best piece of news I have 
heard for many a long day, and I do believe 
you are crying, Catherine,” he said. 

“ I am not crying, and you never seem 
to understand me, Howard,” I said, letting 
a tear fall into my coffee-cup. 

“No one ever could understand you, 
dear,” he said gently ; “ I am sure you will 
212 


3lunt 31ane’flf iFortune 


always remain an interesting enigma to 
me as long as you Kve.” 

“ The closer one gets to a person the 
more incomprehensible he becomes,” I be- 
gan, openly drying my eyes with my hand- 
kerchief. 

She becomes,” Howard corrected. 
“You have always understood me well 
enough, but then I am so simple ! ” 

“ You are,” I said cheerfully, inwardly 
delighted at being called an “ enigma.” 
“But it is too early in the morning to 
talk such nonsense. I shall get ready and 
walk to the station with you, and then go on 
and see Aunt Jane. I quite thought your 
Uncle James would have lived for ever.” 

“ I certainly thought he would outlive 
Aunt Jane,” said Howard. 

When I had left him at the station I 
walked very slowly on towards the dreary 
little row of houses in one of which Aunt 
Jane lives. Her house is called “ Sunny 
Bank,” presumably because there is no 
bank and the windows face the north. In 
every house in the row the front door is 
squeezed between two swelling bow-win- 
dows, in which are displayed plants or or- 
213 


of (Bttnti&t 


naments, their best sides carefully turned 
towards the street, while cheap muslin cur- 
tains rejoice the eyes of the passer and im- 
press upon him the gentility of the inhab- 
itants. 

Aunt Jane’s window-curtains are al- 
ways spotless, her plants well tended, 
and her doorstep immaculate. I entered 
the house expecting to find her bustling 
about as usual, attending to her household 
duties — making beds, baking bread, or iron- 
ing lace — for she has a wholesome con- 
tempt for the mistress of a house who reads 
books or amuses herself by cultivating her 
mind of a morning. Such things may come 
later, when the real business of the day is 
done. 

Extraordinary circumstances, however, 
call for a peculiar line of conduct, and 
Aunt Jane has a high standard of how one 
should behave on special occasions. I 
found her now sitting in her best parlour, 
neatly dressed in black, the family Bible 
open on a table in front of her, and a clean 
pocket-handkerchief resting upon it. She 
was not making use of either, but was ap- 
parently plunged in thought, calculating, 
214 


aiunt 31ane’0 iFortunr 


arranging and rearranging the laying ont 
of seven hundred pounds a year. 

She greeted me most affectionately, her 
usual manner a little toned down by a de- 
cent sadness, though she was too honest to 
express much grief for the death of a 
brother who had treated her with little 
consideration when alive. 

“He has always been a good, kind 
brother to me,” she said without any enthu- 
siasm, when I referred to his death and the 
change in her fortunes. 

“ Of course he has. Aunt J ane,” I said, 
knowing that his kindness had consisted in 
an occasional cheque and a letter in which 
disparaging allusions were made to Uncle 
John. 

“I suppose you will be going to the 
funeral? ” I said. 

“ Certainly, my dear. He was my only 
brother, and I should like to show him 
every respect. I shall have a black para- 
matta and a crape bonnet, and I think I 
shall take the sequins off my silk mantle.” 
She sighed as she went on. “ Sequins 
are a great improvement and very fash- 
ionable, but I do not think they are ‘ k pro- 
215 




pos ^ for such an occasion. What do you 
think? 

I had been wondering what “par- 
amatta ” was, but did not wish to expose 
my ignorance, so I said ; 

“ I think with paramatta they are con- 
sidered quite deep mourning, and I am al- 
most sure I have seen widows wear- 
ing them. Certainly they are worn at 
funerals.” 

“I am afraid you are mistaken, my 
dear, but I shall not decide finally until I 
have consulted my neighbour, Mrs. Doidge, 
who has lost several brothers and will know 
exactly what is suitable. John is not the 
least bit of good in such matters. When I 
asked him he said : ‘ I am sure you look very 
nice in that mantle, my dear ; I have always 
thought so,’ and if I were to press the mat- 
ter I know he would say, ‘ After all, black is 
black,’ or some such ignorant thing as that.” 

Aunt Jane’s eyes twinkled, but she 
quickly remembered herself, and resumed 
her expression of decent sadness. 

“Where is Uncle John?” I asked. 

“Upstairs, my dear. I told him he 
ought to be down here ready to receive any 
216 


aunt 31 anf’fi( iFortune 


one who might call, hut you know what men 
are ! ” 

I will go up and see him,” I said, and 
I ran up the stairs and knocked at the door 
of his room. It was locked, and I heard 
his voice from behind it, saying: 

“ I am busy and cannot see any one just 
at present.” 

I am sure you will see me for a mo- 
ment,” I said coaxingly ; “ I promise not to 
keep you longer. Uncle John.” 

Is it you, Catherine ? ” he said, open- 
ing the door a very little way, and peering 
anxiously out at me with his mild blue 
eyes. 

I have come to congratulate you. Uncle 
John,” I said, embracing him with unusual 
fervour. 

“ It is very kind of you, I^m sure, my 
dear,” he said, keeping his forefinger be- 
tween the leaves of the Vicar of Wake- 
field, which he had been studying when I 
came in. 

“Your aunt is a remarkable woman, 
and well deserves her good fortune,” he 
went on, beginning to walk up and down the 
room. “Just now she is exercised about 
217 


j^ouflfetDtbes; of (Btjentige 


her attire for the funeral, and you will be 
of great use to her, my dear. Women are 
so clever about such things.’^ 

I smiled, and he went on a little inco- 
herently : 

It is a difficult world to live in, a very 
difficult world! Good fortune generally 
comes too late if it comes at all. But this 
will serve to smooth our passage to the 
grave. Your aunt is a remarkable woman, 
a very remarkable woman. I have always 
realized that, and I have always tried to 
cultivate the attitude of mind of the Vicar 
of Wakefield — with but little success, I fear. 
His philosophical calm is not easy to ac- 
quire. Good-bye, my dear, and thank you 
for coming. You will be a great comfort to 
your aunt, I am sure.” 

He opened his book, and I left him to re- 
sume his study, wondering as I went down 
the stairs that such a mild person as Uncle 
John should appear to resent the posthu- 
mous interference of his brother-in-law. 

When I reached the bottom of the stairs 
a familiar voice fell upon my ear. 

am sure, my dear Mrs. Hastings, 
we must all feel for you in your sad 
218 


stunt 31ane’0 iFortune 


bereavement. Still, we cannot but feel 
gratified ” 

Mr. Green bad called to condole, and 
be did it uncommonly well, with just that 
judicious admixture of congratulation 
wbicb tbe circumstances warranted. 

Aunt Jane’s behaviour was equally ad- 
mirable, ber remarks in excellent taste and 
quite to tbe point, tbougb I knew that ber 
mind was dwelling on sequins and para- 
matta, and sbe was anxiously awaiting tbe 
curate’s departure that sbe might consult 
ber neighbour Mrs. Doidge, whose bead 
was visible from time to time above tbe 
dividing fence, behind wbicb sbe was watch- 
ing ber opportunity to pay an uninter- 
rupted call of sympathy. 

Do you think sequins suitable with 
paramatta ? ” I asked Howard when be 
came home in tbe evening. “And if so, 
should you wear them at a funeral 1 ” 

“ Ob, don’t ask me riddles,” be answered 
impatiently. “ Write to tbe Queen or ask 
Mrs. Peacock.” 


15 


219 


CHAPTER XVI 


A REVELATION 

“ Diogenes, being asked whether it was better to marry 
or not, replied, ‘ Whichever you do you will regret it.’ ” 

The weather, which held up bravely 
during the early autumn, broke up about the 
middle of October, and we have had unin- 
terrupted wet weather for almost a week. 
There has been no temptation to go out, and 
I have busied myself indoors, so that I have 
seen nothing of Mrs. Greenlaw and hardly 
anything of my other neighbours. Yester- 
day morning, however, though it still 
rained, I was surprised by an early visit 
from Mrs. Peacock. Morning visits, except 
under very exceptional circumstances, are 
unheard of in Edenrise, it being an under- 
stood thing that every housewife is ab- 
sorbed in her domestic duties until after 
lunch-time. Therefore it was not with 
out serious misgivings that I entered the 
220 


31 Eebelation 


drawing-room and encountered Mrs. Pea- 
cock. 

My fear that some accident had hap- 
pened to Dick or Amabelle and she had 
come to break the news to me was quickly 
set at rest, for Mrs. Peacock, who showed 
unusual signs of excitement, began ab- 
ruptly : 

Oh, my dear Mrs. Howard- Jones, have 
you seen the newspaper this morning? ” 

“ No,” I said ; I generally leave it to 
Howard to tell me the news in the even- 
ings, and he has been away for a day or 
so at his uncle’s funeral. What has hap- 
pened? ” 

‘‘I felt I must come and tell you I I 
expected you would know nothing of it — 
and I am sure I should never have believed 
it possible, though, as you are well aware, 
I have always suspected her ! ” Mrs. Pea- 
cock said mysteriously as she produced a 
newspaper from under her cloak. “ Look 
at that ! ” and opening it, she pointed an- 
grily to a paragraph in the divorce pro- 
ceedings, headed: 

‘‘ A Lady who Acknowledges only the Bond 
of Love,’^ 


221 


l^ousfrioibes? of CEoenrisfe 


Bead it ! ” she said, sinking into a 
chair, apparently quite overcome by her 
feelings. 

My interest was at once aroused, for it 
flashed into my mind that our charming 
neighbour must be the lady who “ acknowl- 
edged only the bond of love,” and it was 
with a certain feeling of pleasure at my 
own acuteness that I read Mrs. Greenlaw’s 
name, and saw that her house and garden, 
as well as the visits of the gentleman we 
had accepted as her brother, were carefully 
described. The pleasure was, however, 
quickly succeeded by righteous indignation, 
and I began to understand Mrs. Peacock’s 
excitement and her wrath, with which tri- 
umph at the exposure of her enemy had 
hardly had time to mingle. She was in- 
censed beyond measure by a facetious allu- 
sion to the social life of Edenrise in a letter 
read in court from Mrs. Greenlaw to the 
co-respondent, in which she described the 
inhabitants of our highly esteemed village 
as consisting of the old-fashioned sitting- 
hen kind of woman, their bald and highly 
respectable husbands, enlivened by one 
milk-and-water curate.” 

222 


0 Inebriation 


Infamous I the effrontery of the wom- 
an I muttered Mrs. Peacock. 

“ Laughter in court/^ I read with rising 
anger. 

Atrocious ! inexcusable ! ” gasped Mrs. 
Peacock. 

“ Abominable and ungrateful ! ’’ I 
echoed. How dare she call us the ‘ sit- 
ting-hen kind of woman ! ’ ” 

“ How dare she call our husbands ^ bald 
and highly respectable ’ ! said Mrs. Pea- 
cock. It is most insulting.” 

I went on reading the case. The letter 
named the day on which she would expect 
the co-respondent, and a letter signed 
“ Your devoted Alfred ” proved that he had 
accepted the invitation. 

Then Mrs. Greenlaw’s parlour-maid, 
Sparks, was called as a witness, and having 
proved the visits of the gentleman in ques- 
tion, she went on to explain the affectionate 
terms in which he stood to the lady. She 
(Sparks) had seen him more than once hold 
Mrs. Greenlaw’s hand longer than is usual 
in shaking hands, she had heard him call 
her ‘^Honora,” and she was prepared to 
swear that they had remained in a room 
223 


®t)e of €t>entisit 


alone together — often for hours at a time. 
She had heard Mrs. Greenlaw say that she 
refused to acknowledge any bond but the 
bond of love I 

I knew something would happen after 
the way in which she went on in the Laby- 
rinth, but I never thought it would be so bad 
as this 1 ” said Mrs. Peacock, making a 
laudable effort to speak more in sorrow 
than in anger. And Sparks ! To think of 
Sparks allowing herself to be mixed up in 
such a disgraceful alf air ! That woman has 
simply made a tool of her; and she was 
such a respectable girl before she went into 
her service ! ” 

Poor Mrs. Peacock ! It was a sad blow 
to her that a servant who had been in her 
employ should appear as a witness in a 
divorce court, and she had always re- 
sented the fact that Mrs. Greenlaw had 
taken her and made a confidential servant 
of her when she had had such trouble with 
the girl. 

I have known a lasting coldness arise be- 
tween fast friends from this cause alone, 
and I have been amused to notice that the 
lady who had taken the servant with an 
224 


a l^ebelatton 


unsatisfactory character, could never resist 
the temptation of extolling her virtues to 
her former mistress. I do not think Mrs. 
Greenlaw had been guilty of this indiscre- 
tion, hut there is no doubt that the fact that 
she found Sparks a most desirable servant, 
had served to widen the breach and make 
Mrs. Peacock much more suspicious of her 
than she would otherwise have been. 

To think that we should have been al- 
most on intimate terms with a woman who 
appears as the respondent — as the guilty 
party — in a divorce case 1 ” ejaculated Mrs. 
I^eacock. I shall always be thankful now 
that I got rid of Sparks when I did.” 

With my usual self-restraint I did not 
remind Mrs. Peacock that the girl had left 
her because of some of Harold’s little pleas- 
antries. I only said, smiling: 

If you had kept her she could not have 
appeared as a witness in this case.” 

“ How can I tell that ! ” said Mrs. Pea- 
cock. A girl who will sit at the green- 
grocer’s when she is supposed to be bicy- 
cling for her health is quite capable of go- 
ing and gossiping with the servants of a 
woman like Mrs. Greenlaw. And then how 
225 


®l)e of (iDOenriOf 


can we tell what might or might not have 
happened? ” 

‘‘Well, it is a mercy we are not all 
drawn into the business,” I said soothingly. 
“ What should you have done if you had 
been called as a witness, Mrs. Peacock? ” 

Mrs. Peacock coloured up and became 
quite incoherent. 

“/ — I should have fainted! I should 
have refused to appear! I should never 
have smiled again! Nothing would have 
induced me to go into court — into a divorce 
cQurt ! ” 

“ I am glad Mr. Green has nothing to do 
with it,” I remarked thoughtfully. 

“ It is not his fault that he hasn’t, and I 
warned his sister of his danger long ago,” 
said Mrs. Peacock, brightening. 

I glanced again at the newspaper, and 
remarked the date of the letters quoted. 

“Mrs. Greenlaw’s letters were written 
months ago, when she first came, so that it 
gives her first impressions only,” I said. 

“We have no reason to suppose that 
she modified them ! And what decent person 
would have such first impressions ! Or ex- 
press them if she had ! ” said Mrs. Peacock 
226 


at Kebelation 


indignantly. I always said red hair indi- 
cated a designing mind, and I cannot quite 
forgive you for persuading me to call upon 
her.” 

I was roused by this, and said quite 
angrily ; 

0 Mrs. Peacock, you know perfectly 
well it was Mr. Green who spoke of her as 
‘ an injured lady,’ and begged us all to treat 
her in a neighbourly manner I I did nothing 
in the matter. Nothing whatever! You 
were the very first to call upon her ! ” 

“ Well, I wash my hands of Mr. Green — 
and of the whole affair,” said Mrs. Pea- 
cock, rising. ‘‘Mademoiselle said a long 
time ago that that man, the co-respondent, 
was not her brother, and I never did like 
the look of him ! ” 

“ I always thought ‘ Toute Moralite ’ a 
very intelligent woman,” I said, gladly 
turning the conversation into a fresh chan- 
nel. 

“ There’s not the least doubt about that, 
and if she marries the chemist, which she 
certainly will do, she will still be able to 
teach the children. I have arranged all 
that in my own mind, and I will see that he 
227 


of (Eoenrioe 


does marry her ! ” said Mrs. Peacock firmly, 
sitting down again. 

She will teach them French and gossip 
in all its branches,” I said under my breath, 
and then remarked aloud, I suppose Mrs. 
Greenlaw will hardly come back here ? ” 

‘‘Let her come if she dares, after the 
manner in which she has ridiculed us I ” 
And Mrs. Peacock looked so dangerous that 
I was afraid to say what I felt, which was 
that Edenrise would be sadly dull without 
our fascinating neighbour — without any 
one to criticise or be jealous of — ^without 
her golden hair, her winning smile and 
ready compliment. Her departure will, I 
know, leave a blank which Mrs. Peacock, 
with the best intentions in the world, will 
never be able to fill. 

By the end of the day Edenrise was in 
a ferment. Every man and woman was in 
possession of the news and had the unfor- 
tunate letter by heart ; and some of the chil- 
dren too! 

When I looked in at the chemist’s — for 
some beetle-paste — in the afternoon, I 
learned from “ Toute Moralite,” who was in 
228 


ai Ketjelation 


earnest conversation with her middle-aged 
admirer, that Mrs. Greenlaw was not in 
Edenrise and was not expected back for 
some time, though there was as yet no news 
of her trying to let her house. I learnt also 
that the curate had gone to visit his maiden 
aunt, and that Mrs. Welwyn was ill — and 
no wonder ! ” 

Mon Dieu ! comme tout cela est shock- 
tag!” ejaculated “ Toute Moralite.” 

As she had nothing more interesting to 
say, I left the shop with Miss Green, who 
had come in to purchase a cake of carbolic 
soap, with which, I suppose, she intended 
to wash her hands of Mrs. Greenlaw and all 
her works. 

‘‘A most scandalous affair,” she said 
angrily, and I am glad that you and your 
husband, being such near neighbours, are 
not further mixed up in it.” 

We are much too cautious. But your 
brother? He was so very intimate with 
Mrs. Greenlaw,” I said maliciously. 

“ Oh, not at all. I never considered him 
to be really intimate with her. He spent 
some time in playing croquet with her, it is 
true, but then he is so fond of the game. 

229 


of CEOenrioe 


Next summer he will be able to play with 
the Manners ; they have just got a set and 
are having their lawn levelled, and Mrs. 
Manners will see that they never play when 
the grass is wet.” 

Capital,” I replied. “ He would badly 
miss not being able to play if Mrs. Green- 
law should not come back.” 

Come back ! ” Miss Green said indig- 
nantly. “ She would never dare to show 
herself here again ! ’ 

Perhaps not. No, I suppose she will 
hardly come back,” I said sadly. 

Miss Green was annoyed at my tone, 
and she went on to make some very scath- 
ing remarks, to which I hardly listened. I 
was thinking all the time what a pity it was 
that Mr. Green could not marry Mrs. 
Greenlaw, or some such clever woman, who 
would twirl him round her finger and very 
likely make a man of him — if not a bishop ! 

“Nothing happens as it ought in this 
world,” I said, sighing. 

Miss Green no doubt considered the re- 
mark irreverent, but she could not resist 
the retort: 

“ In that case, it is not the world that is 
230 


at l^ebelatton 


at fault, but the worldlings.” With which 
trite remark she left me, carrying common 
sense and carbolic soap with her. 

I met no one else in the village, and at 
the end of the street I turned into the field- 
path, glad to be alone to enjoy the sunshine 
after rain and to breathe in the pleasant 
smell of damp earth and decaying leaves. 

The path was already in shadow, but 
the glow of sunlight on the bare hills above 
me and the golden tints of the beech-trees 
in the valley were refreshing, and as my 
eyes rested on the familiar outline of the 
landscape it pleased me to reflect that there 
is not a vestige of common sense about 
Nature ! There may be a semblance of or- 
der in her methods — no doubt there is ; but 
for sheer bad management and wasteful- 
ness no human housekeeper can come near 
her ! We have had enough rain in the past 
week in Edenrise to last a year all over the 
country if it had been properly distributed, 
and as for the animal kingdom, one set 
of animals exists simply to waste another, 
while human beings exist no doubt to per- 
vert and misrepresent the animal kingdom. 

“ No,” I corrected myself, “ human be- 
231 


J^ott0etDibe0 of (II;Ontrtj0?e 


ings exist to perplex and irritate one an- 
other ! ” And I smiled as I thought of Mrs. 
Peacock, and Miss Green and of Mrs. 
Greenlaw and her mysterious doings. But 
I soon grew serious again when I began to 
think of the effect all this might have upon 
Mrs. Welwyn, and to wonder how far she 
had been in Mrs. Greenlaw^s confidence. I 
wondered if she had known that the brother 
was in reality a lover, or if the news of the 
divorce proceedings had come to her with 
the same shock that it came to us. Natu- 
rally enough, I could come to no conclusion, 
as I have not been in Mrs. Welwyn’s con- 
fidence lately, or in Mrs. Greenlaw’s at any 
time. And so, putting a curb on my curi- 
osity as best I could, I hurried back to meet 
Howard, who has been away for nearly a 
week, attending Uncle James’s funeral, 
winding up his affairs, and arranging mat- 
ters for Aunt Jane. 


232 


CHAPTER XVII 

MRS. WELWYN’S VIEW OP MRS. GREENLAW 

“ The truest joys they seldom prove 
Who free from quarrels live. 

’Tis the most tender part of love 
Each other to forgive.” 

John, Duke of Buckingham. 

Howard was in excellent spirits when 
he came home. We met with a certain 
amount of shyness which we always feel 
after even a short separation, but the chil- 
dren flung themselves upon him and gave 
him the warmest welcome possible. Dick 
clung round his neck while Amabelle firmly 
clasped his knees, and then, when he took 
them up, they stretched out their arms for 
me, and we were all enveloped in one gen- 
eral embrace. 

“ Have you been good children while I 
have been away ? ” asked Howard, setting 
them down on the ground and holding me 
at arm^s length. “ Was mother happy all 
the time? ” 


233 


of eoenvisse 


Of course, mother is always happy,’’ 
said Dick, laughing at the idea of a grown- 
up person having any troubles, “ but she 
wouldn’t let me mind her properly,” he 
went on in rather an aggrieved tone. “ She 
wouldn’t let me stay up in the evenings and 
talk to her like you do, and she made me 
do my lessons just the same, so I hadn’t any 
time to do anything hardly. I don’t call it 
fair! But I weeded the rose-bed.” 

“And I helped her dust the drawing- 
room, and I slept with her and minded her 
in the nights, and oh, I have been so good ! ” 
said Amabelle, beginning to run up and 
down the room excitedly as she spoke. 
“ And mammy took me to church on Sun- 
day for a treat because I was so good.” 

“And did you behave nicely?” asked 
Howard. 

“ Yes. I stood up when everybody stood 
up and I hid my eyes when they did, and 
once — only once — I laughed out loud be- 
cause Mr. Green looked so funny in his 
white pinafore, and mother said ‘ Hush — 
sh — sh 1 ’ and then I was frightened and 
thought Mr. Green would come down and 
put me out. But it was all right. He didn’t, 
234 




’cause he was too busy singing his prayers 
out of a great book and hadn^t no time to 
come to put little girls out. Mammy says 
she can’t take me again if I laugh. And, 
daddy,” she went on, stopping in front of 
him and looking up with her solemn brown 
eyes wide open, I understood lots of what 
he was talking about — it was all about that 
little thing in your stomach, you know — 
what you call your spirit.” 

I tried not to laugh, for Amabelle was 
evidently hurt and surprised when Howard 
showed signs of amusement. 

He suppressed his mirth as well as he 
could and sent the children off to look for 
chocolates in his portmanteau. 

Then, after some personal inquiries had 
been made, I said : 

You have heard the news, I sup- 
pose? ” 

About Mrs. Greenlaw? Oh, yes.” He 
rubbed his hands and smiled. Edenrise is 
well rid of her, and so is Greenlaw, I make 
no doubt.” 

He may be,” I said, “ but Edenrise will 
be dreadfully dull without her. I don’t 
know how I shall bear it. We shall have 
16 235 


i^ousietotbesi of d^oniris^r 


nobody to gossip about, and then whatever 
will poor Mrs. Welwyn do! ” 

Oh, you must try and see more of her,’^ 
he said. 

“ You stupid old thing ! As if I could 
take Mrs. Greenlaw^s place in any one’s 
affections! I am not a siren ” 

“ No, you are a dear, old-fashioned sit- 
ting hen ! ” he said, trying to prevent my 
replying, after the usual manner of an af- 
fectionate husband. 

That’s better than being ‘ bald and 
respectable,’ ” I said as soon as I could 
speak. 

A little later I received a message from 
Mrs. Welwyn asking me to come and see 
her, and I left Howard rather reluctant- 
ly before he had told me half the things 
he had to tell of Uncle James’s funeral, 
of the strange collection of relations who 
had attended it, and of Aunt Jane’s de- 
meanour as chief mourner and residuary 
legatee. 

When I reached the Welwyns’ house 
Mr. Welwyn opened the door to me, and I 
noticed that he shook hands quite affection- 
ately. 


236 




Ella is expecting you — it is so kind of 
you to come,” he said. 

Is she ill ? ” I asked. 

No, only a little excited and upset. 
She will be so glad to see you.” 

Mrs. Welwyn was lying on the sofa in 
her room when I came in. I begged her not 
to move, and I sat down by her and began 
to make some perfectly trivial remarks. 

“ I am so glad to see you,” she began, 
and stopped. I wanted to see you first, 
before any one else,” she began again, 
“ because — because I know you will under- 
stand. You will not be hard on Mrs. Green- 
law when you know all about it — all the 
facts of the case.” 

“ Did you know about this divorce busi- 
ness ? ” I asked. “ I hope you did.” 

“ Yes, of course I knew. Honora told 
me everything — except just when it was 
coming off. She knew it would excite me so 
if she told me that. But I knew everything 
else, and I wanted to tell you about it and to 
explain that that unfortunate letter in the 
newspapers was written long ago — when 
she first came — and of course she had no 
idea, when she wrote it, that it would be 
237 


of CEOrnrioe 


read by any one else but the person to 
■whom it was written.” 

You knew he was not her brother? ” I 

said. 

Yes,” she answered, “ I have known it 
for a long time. But do not misunderstand 
her. He was devoted to her, it is true, but 
his visits were simply the visits of a friend, 
and she made it appear otherwise simply to 
free herself — and her husband — from an 
intolerable bond.” 

‘‘ Will she marry him now ? ” I asked. 

I hardly know. I think myself that 
she will, though she has dismissed him for 
the present. But don’t you think it was 
generous of her to take the matter into her 
own hands and bear all the scandal herself 
when her husband wanted to marry 
again? ” she asked with eager enthusiasm. 

I answered without much fervour, and 
she went on : 

Of course she wanted to be free too — 
naturally enough. Why on earth should 
two people be tied together for life when 
they do not love each other, especially when 
they have no children to consider? It is 
monstrous! Honora made a mistake. It 
238 




was dreadful for her — she never could love 
her husband — but how was she to know? 
She has sutfered enough for her mistake ! ” 

And so, no doubt, has he,” I said very 
quietly. 

And to be free she has to go through 
all this 1 ” Mrs. Welwyn exclaimed. 
“ Promise me you will speak a good word 
for her when you hear it all discussed? ” 
she pleaded. “Every one will gossip so 
and be so ready to condemn her! You will 
be able to tell them that she altered her 
opinion of us directly she got to know us 
well, and how sorry she is about that letter. 
As to her friend — appearances, I know, are 
against her, and she has made enemies, but 
she has acted from the best motives. In- 
deed she has ! If you only knew ” 

Mrs. Welwyn stopped, and then began 
again shyly : 

“ If you only knew what she has been to 
me ! I have never had such a friend ! She 
is not like other women. She knows so 
many things, and she can talk about them. 
If it had not been for her I should never 
have been able to make it up with J ulius — I 
know I shouldn’t.” 


239 


of d^tienrioe 


‘‘You have made it up?” I asked 
eagerly. 

“ I wanted to tell you about that,” she 
answered with a good deal of embarrass- 
ment. “You remember how desperate I 
felt when I talked to you just before Ho- 
nora came? ” 

I nodded. 

“ I thought things were hopeless — quite 
hopeless — and we never, never could come 
to any understanding. Then when she 
came of course I was attracted to her from 
the very first, and after a little while we 
began to talk about our private affairs. 
She told me all about her husband — how 
unhappy she had been with him — she 
couldn’t love him — she hated him — and yet 
— and yet somehow all the time she was 
able to look at things from a man’s point of 
view as well as a woman’s. You don’t know 
how it helped me to talk to her and to hear 
her talk. I don’t understand it! She is 
wonderful ! Perfectly wonderful ! ” 

Mrs. Welwyn sat up, her face flushed 
with enthusiasm. 

“ She helped you to feel ditferently 
about things,” I said. “ She made it clear 
240 




to you that you really could understand and 
share your husband’s feelings ? ” 

“Yes; she laughed when I said I 
couldn’t be of any use to him because I 
wasn’t clever — that I could never under- 
stand him. She told me that he was really 
fond of me. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t 
at first. I told her about the other woman. 
She explained all that to me. She said it 
was my fault. Oh, she didn’t spare me! 
She said I had driven him away, and he was 
ready to give her up if I would be different 
to him, and of course she was right. You 
told me what I ought to do — only I couldn’t 
do it. But when she suggested it to me I 
began to watch J ulius, and to think a great 
deal about him. Only lately, because, you 
know, I was too much taken up with her 
at first to want to think about any one 
else.” 

“And then!” 

“ Still I didn’t dare to say anything to 
him. I didn’t dare begin. But a few days 
ago,” she went on, “he began himself to 
talk to me about Honora. He was inter- 
ested in her, and he was so sympathetic that 
I told him everything — what she had been 
241 


of d^oenrior 


doing and what I felt for her. And then, 
and then somehow he seemed to see that 
my feelings towards him had been chang- 
ing — that I don^t only care for her ” 

I made a movement of sympathy, and 
in a moment Mrs. Welwyn’s head was on 
my shoulder and she was saying between 
her sobs: 

“We talked it all out — I — I cannot tell 
you all that he said — or that I said — it was 
too painful. He blamed himself even more 
than I blamed myself. I didn’t know how 
he suffered ! It is dreadful how two people 
can live in two different worlds of feeling 
like that — be constantly together and yet be 
like strangers. It can never happen again, 
I am sure of that. I feel so — so different — 
so much happier.” 

A lump rose in my throat. 

“I cannot tell you how glad I am,” I 
said, with some little difficulty, for, like 
many other women, my words, which flow 
freely enough when my feelings are not 
particularly engaged, do not come readily 
on an occasion like this. 

Words are not, however, essential. I 
understood Mrs. Welwyn and she me, and 
242 




before I left I bad solemnly promised her 
that I would not be hard npon Mrs. Green- 
law or allow any personal pique to preju- 
dice me against her. 

I found Howard anxiously awaiting my 
return. 

“Well?” he said. 

I looked at him for a moment without 
saying anything. My eyes were full of 
tears. 

“Are you crying because Mrs. Green- 
law has succeeded in obtaining her divorce, 
or because she has gone away from Eden- 
rise, or what ? ” he asked lightly. 

I began to laugh, shutting my eyes 
sharply to get rid of the tears. 

“ I had almost forgotten Mrs. Greenlaw. 
And I am really laughing. It was Mrs. 
Welwyn who made me cry,” I added in my 
illogical, feminine way. 

Howard smiled, a superior smile, and as 
we talked I tried to lay all the stress I could 
on Mrs. Welwyn’s view of Mrs. Greenlaw 
and of the part she had played in the devel- 
opment of her ideas. 

“ I am amazed at Mrs. Welwyn’s sim- 
243 


of (Eoenrioe 


plicity ! She is so impressionable that I am 

sure if I bad been in Welwyn^s place ” 

You would bave acted as be did, I bave 
no doubt ! You would bave lost your tem- 
per,” I put in quickly. 

“ A man with any real aifection for bis 
wife,” Howard proceeded calmly, “ and 
possessed of ordinary patience and 
tact ” 

“ Would still bave been a man ! ” I broke 
in again, with just a shade of superiority 
in my tone. ^‘And only a woman — prob- 
ably only Mrs. Greenlaw — could ever bave 
exercised such a healthy influence over 
Mrs. Welwyn.” 

“ Ob, I daresay you may be right, and I 
am sure I am perfectly willing to give the 
devil bis due ! ” Howard said, shrugging 
bis shoulders. 


244 


CHAPTER XVIII 

MRS. GREENLAW’S POINT OP VIEW 

*‘Je n’etais point faite pour etre femme. Mais dans 
notre sexe, on n’ achette la liberte que par I’esclavage, 
et il faut commencer par etre servante pour devenir sa 
maitresse un jour.” — Rousseau. 

A FEW days later we awoke to one of 
those lovely days that in our climate capri- 
cious autumn sometimes vouchsafes us. 
Damp earth, decaying leaves, and colourless 
flowers were bathed in a flood of sunshine, 
and I was tempted to spend the morning in 
the garden. As I turned up the earth, re- 
moving withered plants, and as often as not 
stirring up and maiming in my ardour the 
bulbs that were to blossom in the spring, 
I glanced up at the shrouded windows of 
the empty house next door. My thoughts 
ran on my fascinating neighbour, and I 
wondered what manner of person would 
replace her — or, rather, occupy her house 
— now she had left Edenrise. 

245 




My imagination pictured in her stead a 
solid British matron revelling in all the 
conventionalities of life. I fancied myself 
paying a first call upon her and referring, 
perhaps too lightly, to the former occupant 
of the house. I seemed to see her warning 
finger held up as her husband entered the 
room, for it is still a fable among us that 
we matrons must respect the innocence of 
our husbands, and if we do speak of any- 
thing that is not quite proper, they must on 
no account hear a word of it ! 

I dismissed the vision and began to 
wonder whether Aunt Jane and Uncle John 
might not take the house now they had the 
money. I thought of Aunt Jane’s penetra- 
ting eye and of the weak places in my sys- 
tem of housekeeping, and, on the other 
hand, I thought of the happy mornings I 
might spend with Uncle John in the gar- 
den, for on horticultural matters he has 
quite decided views of his own, and has 
given me many really valuable sugges- 
tions. 

I sighed, and turned my thoughts again 
to Mrs. Greenlaw. 

The scent of violets came to me through 
246 


€>reenlatD'0 |Boint of JDieto 


the odour of decaying leaves and brought 
with it thoughts of spring and of the 
changing face of nature and of the un- 
varying puzzles of life, of death, and of 
love. 

Fortunately for us,” I thought, we 
housewives have so many obvious cares 
and duties that we have little time to in- 
dulge in fancies.” 

I roused myself with something of an 
effort when the children appeared and 
threw my whole energies into a game with 
them, for a mother knows how quick chil- 
dren are to recognise and to decline to ac- 
cept as an equal a grown person who plays 
half-heartedly. I chased them in to their 
dinner, and the meal was a little uproar- 
ious. 

When it was over I was called into the 
kitchen on some trifling domestic occasion, 
and on my return both Dick and Amabelle 
had disappeared. 

I sought for them behind the doors, in 
cupboards and under beds, remarking in de- 
spairing tones as I did so, Wherever are 
those children? I shall never, never find 
them ! ” for I have learned from experience 
247 


l^ou^etDibeje^ of (Eoenrioe 


that they cannot resist showing themselves 
as soon as their mother confesses herself 
outwitted. 

They were nowhere in the house, and 
thinking I heard voices outside, I hastened 
out and caught sight of them at last in Mrs. 
Greenlaw^s garden, and, to my surprise, I 
saw that Mrs. Greenlaw herself was there, 
kneeling upon the ground, an arm thrown 
round each of them, and I heard Amabelle 
saying fervently : 

am so glad you have come back! 
They said you wasn’t coming back no 
more.” 

“ But I knew you would,” said Dick in 
tones of superiority, and I said so.” 

I hesitated a moment, standing screened 
by the bushes, and then, bending down, I 
scjueezed myself through the gap in the 
privet hedge and stood, a little dishevelled, 
on the siren’s ground. 

She saw me at once and advanced to 
meet me, the children still hanging about 
her. 

“0 Mrs. Howard-Jones, this is kind! 
I can see from your face that you come as 
a friend,” she said. 


248 


point of ^Bieto 


‘‘ I hardly know,” I said, holding ont my 
hand with rather a doubtful smile. 

I should so much like a talk with you, 
if you could spare me half an hour,” she 
said. May I take the children in and give 
them some chocolate before we begin to 
talk? ” 

Have you come back to stay? ” I asked, 
as we all went together towards the house. 

No, oh, no ! I am afraid Edenrise will 
hardly appreciate me now. I should not 
find it such a pleasant place to live in after 
what has occurred. But please don’t think 
that I intentionally outraged the feelings of 
the matrons of the place. I did not 1 ” 

You did not spare us,” I said a little 
stiffly. 

We had entered her drawing-room, and 
Dick and Amabelle stood, their arms about 
each other’s necks, eyeing us curiously, for 
they had recognised that we had suddenly 
retired from their world. When they were 
propitiated each with a box of chocolates, 
they departed happily enough to their play. 

Then Mrs. Greenlaw drew her chair up 
to the fire and we began to talk, or rather 
she began to talk. 


249 


of dEOrnrtoe 


When I came here,” she said, “ I had 
no idea whatever of entering into the social 
life of Edenrise.” 

Yon thought you were burying your- 
self in the country, I suppose ? ” 

“ Just so. Edenrise society was, I as- 
sure you, quite a revelation to me, and as 
I had nothing in particular to do, I allowed 
myself to be drawn into it. It amused me, 
it was all so delightfully fresh. Do you 
remember the children’s party at the Pea- 
cocks’ I ” 

You enjoyed it? ” 

Immensely ! I never enjoyed anything 
more,” she answered. “ At the children’s 
parties I had been used to, little starched 
children were engaged in trying to imitate 
grown-up people, and they did it very 
badly. Here the grown-up people imitated 
the children, and they did it so very well. 
It was delightful ! And then,” she went on, 
‘^your neighbours were all so amusing! 
Mrs. Peacock, and Miss Green, and the 
Manners family, the curate, and the doc- 
tor — they all amused me! And I could 
see that they amused you. And you and 
your husband — well, I think I afforded 
250 


^reenlatD’flf point of 


you more amusement than you afforded 
me! ” 

She laughed, gazing straight at me. 

“ Why did you say such unkind things 
when we afforded you so much innocent 
amusement ? ” I asked. 

Oh, you know how misleading first im- 
pressions are. And I daresay you can 
understand the necessity an imaginative 
person is under to exaggerate such impres- 
sions, and to pose a little to one’s friends, 
especially in a letter.” 

I nodded. 

“ I regret now that I expressed myself 
so strongly. I ought to have been more 
circumspect. Believe me, Mrs. Howard- 
Jones, if it had not been necessary for my 
purpose I would not have allowed that let- 
ter of mine to appear ; though I did not, of 
course, know it would he printed in the 
newspapers, or that any one here would 
ever see it.” 

“Were there not other letters?” I 
asked. 

“ There were certainly others, hut this 
one happened to have a definite date and a 
definite answer to it. But don’t let us talk 
17 251 


titlje of dBOenrtoe 


of letters ! ” she exclaimed, letting her 
hands fall on her lap and leaning forward 
to look into the fire. “ Language was 
given us to conceal our thoughts, and wri- 
ting, there is no doubt, to misrepresent 
them ! ” 

What is the use of our talking, then? ” 
I said impatiently. 

“I did not mean to be fiippant,” she 
said, changing her tone. I really felt a 
desire to talk to you and to explain things 
from my point of view. Perhaps it was 
weak of me. But I have always thought 
you such an open-minded woman.” 

I really believe I am capable of look- 
ing at things from another person’s stand- 
point,” I said, feeling slightly fiattered. 

That is so rare a gift in a married 
woman — in a happily-married woman, I 
mean,” Mrs. Greenlaw said brightly. 

“I suppose that you will marry your 
lover now you are free to do so ? ” I asked, 
going straight to the point which inter- 
ested me. 

I observed that the word lover ” did 
not otfend her. She made no objection to it, 
and she evidently had no intention of pre- 
252 


6reenlato’0 |)Doint of 


senting him to me in the light of a platonic 
friend. 

She looked at me steadily with a slightly 
contemptuous smile on her lips for a mo- 
ment before she answered. 

‘^No, I shall not marry him. He be- 
longs to the past. We are not the slaves of 
the past, and I do not intend to throw away 
my freedom directly I have obtained it.” 

“ What could have induced you to marry 
originally? ” I could not refrain from say- 
ing. 

Oh, that was an error of youth,” she 
replied frankly. I had not felt my feet. 
I did not realize my own power, and I 
wanted so many things — money particu- 
larly. In my innocence I thought that to 
marry was to get them, as well as to be com- 
paratively free from restraint. -I did not 
get what I wanted.” She shrugged her 
shoulders and maintained an expressive 
silence for a moment. 

‘‘Well, don’t let us talk of that,” I 
said. 

“ Then, of course,” she went on, taking 
no notice of my remark, “ I was no sooner 
married than my father died, and I had 
253 


l^ou£^etDitje£f of Coenrtoe 


money at my own disposal — one of ‘ life’s 
little ironies ’ again ! But one has to buy 
one’s experience in this world. I don’t re- 
gret mine. It has taught me many things, 
among others to look round me well, to 
see where I am going, and to avoid pitfalls 
of all kinds.” 

She threw hack her head, and the fire- 
light, which was gradually growing more 
powerful than the light of the dying day, 
caught and lit up the golden threads of her 
hair and flickered on the beautiful curve of 
her throat. 

“ You regard marriage as a pitfall? ” I 
said. 

She nodded. 

“ But life is so lonely ! ” 

Marriage does not alter that fact — if 
it is a fact,” she said. In married life the 
harriers that are thrown down in one direc- 
tion are instinctively set up in another. I 
am repeating some one else’s thought, but 
it is very true, isn’t it? ” 

She looked at me curiously, and I said : 

“ Well, in any case, I could not support 
life without the companionship which it 
brings. And, besides, there are times when 
254 


^rs!^ ^reenlato’sf point of Wieijj 


one gets near — ^very near — to complete 
union and sympathy.” 

Mrs. Greenlaw moved impatiently. 

What a price for a woman to pay ! ” 
she exclaimed. ‘‘A lifetime in a coop for 
moments — mere moments — of sympathy 1 ” 
She gazed into the fire and added with a 
half smile on her lips : Surely one need 
not pay that price ! One can enjoy such mo- 
ments under the free vault of heaven ! ” 

The word “ coop ” was an unfortunate 
one. It reminded me of her letter and the 
opinion she had expressed in it of the 
housewives of Edenrise. 

“ I look at such things from a totally dif- 
ferent standpoint,” I said stiffly. “ I think 
that a woman can be married and yet re- 
tain her freedom.” 

“ Freedom ! ” said Mrs. Greenlaw scorn- 
fully. “ ‘ Trusted with a muzzle, enfran- 
chised with a clog ! ’ But a happily-married 
woman is always biassed. It is impossible 
for her to keep an open mind on such ques- 
tions. She thinks that what is good for her 
— or what she is pleased to call good — is 
good for all the other women in the world.” 

I hated her at that moment, for nothing 
265 




makes an enlightened married woman so 
angry as the insinuation that marriage has 
narrowed her outlook. 

I am not biassed,” I said hotly. “ I see 
your point of view clearly enough, and 
there is doubtless a good deal to he said for 
it; but then this talk of freedom! What 
does it amount to? You know you would 
give it up to-morrow for anything that 
seemed to you to he more desirable at the 
moment ! ” 

« Very possibly,” she said quite imper- 
turbably, but to-day I value what I call 
my freedom very highly, and I am not go- 
ing to give it up, or marry the man who has 
helped me to obtain it, just because it is 
what nine out of ten women would do under 
the circumstances. Why should I tie my- 
self? My business in life — and yours, too, 
as a woman — is to be loved and admired. 
We educate and benefit the world by exist- 
ing for that purpose, and the wider our 
sphere of influence, the better for the com- 
munity, isn’t it ? ” 

‘‘I grant you that love and admira- 
tion are meat and drink to a woman — ” I 
began. 


256 


<0rernlato’sf point of Witfs} 


Yes, and every one requires a change 
of diet,” she interposed quickly. I cannot 
conceive of anything more sating than a 
constant diet of legal love — Even if one 
could imagine such a thing!” she added, 
laughing. 

“ One cannot expect to get everything 
and give nothing in this world,” I said. 

But the wise woman takes all she can 
and gives only when it is necessary.” 

I was going to speak, but she stopped 
me by saying : 

know all your arguments! I have 
heard them again and again. But you do 
not get the opportunity of hearing my side 
of the question frankly stated every day of 
the week. People are too timid and too 
much afraid of one another to say what 
they really think. Most men regard life as 
I do, in the light of a game, and they know 
that to play it too seriously is a weakness ; 
but instead of saying so plainly they think 
it wise to speak of life as ‘ a pilgrimage,’ 
‘ a vale of tears,’ or a ‘ prison-house.’ They 
talk of helping their fellow-pilgrims over 
stones when all the while they are studying 
their movements only to seize the oppor- 
257 


®lje of Coenrioe 


tunity of getting ahead of them. Their 
greatest delight is to show their skill in the 
game. Why not be frank? Life is a game, 
and a very good game, too — for a woman 
as well as for a man — if she only knows 
how to play it properly. It is a pity that 
most women seem born with the idea that 
it is their business in life to sit down and 
sutler, and to sit down and sutler just 
where a blind providence has seen fit to 
place them, when they might enjoy them- 
selves, when they might, if they liked, move 
freely across the board.” 

Even women are forced to move more 
or less, sooner or later,” I said. 

“Not at Edenrise! Nobody moves or 
thinks of moving here,” she said pleas- 
antly, speaking as though we were entirely 
agreed on this as on all other subjects. 
“At one time I thought that I was indu- 
cing a little movement among the players, 
but I don’t flatter myself that I have made 
any permanent impression.” 

She laughed, as at a pleasant recollec- 
tion. 

“ I think that you did induce Mrs. Wel- 
wyn to move, in any case,” I said thought- 
258 


^rrenlaiD’sf ^point of iDieto 


fully, “ and I congratulate you. I wonder 
what made you use your influence to make 
her move in that direction ? She was ready, 
I am sure, to adopt your views of love 
and marriage, to leave her husband or to 
take any rash step that you might have 
seriously suggested to her. And yet she 
says that if it had not been for you she 
would never have made it up with her hus- 
band. I don’t understand it. It seems to 
me so inconsistent.” 

“ Not a bit,” Mrs. Greenlaw said, smil- 
ing. am not a professional moralist, 
and I do not believe that what is right for 
one person is right for all. I was born I 
suppose with a certain amount of artistic 
sense, and I always feel balked of part of 
my enjoyment of life if the children are 
not happy. Ella is only a child, and you 
can hardly suppose that I should talk to 
her as I talk to you.” 

“Why not?” I said. 

She shrugged her shoulders as she 
answered : 

“ Milk for babes — Strong meat for wom- 
en like you and me — Ella’s atfections 
were running to waste — and she is one of 
259 


®l^e J^ous?eii3tties? of €ttnxt&t 


those people who can so easily be made 
happy.” 

But who suffer dreadfully when they 
do suffer,” I said. 

“Yes, when other people haven’t the 
sense to understand them, or the patience 
to explain things to them. — I am really 
sorry to leave Edenrise,” she said, sud- 
denly changing the subject, “ and I am glad 
to have had a talk with you. You and I 
understand each other so well ! ” She put 
her hand on my knee for a moment quite 
affectionately. 

I let it rest there and I said little or 
nothing. No burning indignation filled my 
Boul and none of the stock moral phrases 
and conventional warnings with which I 
am familiar seemed to me in the least ap- 
propriate to Mrs. Greenlaw’s case. Her 
attitude towards life appeared to me to 
be a perfectly logical one. I felt that she 
had taken her own measure and taken it 
more accurately than she had taken mine. 
As the wife of a dull man it is evident she 
could be neither happy nor successful, 
while, independent and untrammelled, she 
is capable of enjoying her own life, and 
260 


<0rtenlatD’sf point of i9teto 


will doubtless give a great deal of pleasure 
to other people. My fatal facility for see- 
ing things from another person’s point of 
view entirely prevented me from arguing 
with her, and I did not try to point out 
to her the error of her ways. 

‘‘ I hope you will find other people and 
other places as entertaining as you have 
found Edenrise,” I said. 

‘‘I hope I may. I am going to travel 
for the present, and I have no doubt that 
I shall always look back with pleasure at 
the few months I have spent among the 
housewives of Edenrise. I hope I may hear 
of you again.” 

I can only hope that my next neigh- 
bour will atford me as much instruction 
and amusement as you have done,” I said 
lightly. 

We both smiled, and I had just risen 
to go when Mrs. Welwyn came in. She 
glanced quickly at Mrs. Greenlaw and then 
at me before she flung her arms round her 
friend’s neck. Then she turned to me and 
said impulsively: 

I can’t tell you how glad I am to see 
you together ! I know you will understand 
261 


turtle of Coenrioe 


each other so well now yon have had a real 
talk.” 

I think we understand each other per- 
fectly,” I said as I took my leave of them. 

Shall I see you again before you go, Mrs. 
Greenlaw? ” 

I am afraid not. I go to-morrow or 
next day. I am only here just to pack up 
my things. I shall leave the house in the 
agent’s hands for him to let furnished, if 
possible.” 

Mrs. Welwyn sighed. 

I went out by the way I came in, through 
the window, and as I was closing the case- 
ment behind me I took the opportunity of 
looking back into the room. The firelight 
made it beautiful with lights and shadows, 
and as I looked I saw Mrs. Welwyn drop 
on her knees in front of Mrs. Greenlaw and 
throw her arms about her waist, and I saw 
Mrs. Greenlaw’s golden head bend down 
until her cheek rested on Mrs. Welwyn’s 
hair. 

I walked slowly back to my own house 
in a thoughtful mood, and when Howard 
came home a little later he complained that 
I was irresponsive and self-absorbed. 

262 


point of JDieto 


A woman exists to be admired,’^ I said, 
and if you do not admire her you are 
depriving her of her due.” 

“ Who could admire such a weather- 
cock?” said Howard in a bantering tone. 
^‘What have you been doing? Reading 
Ruskin? ” 

No ; I have been studying Mrs. Green- 
law,” I replied. Her views are not quite 
the same as Ruskin’s, but I think they both 
hold that the wise woman exacts many 
things from her lovers — takes everything 
and gives as little as possible in return.” 

“ Just the views I should have expected 
Mrs. Greenlaw to hold — only, of course, she 
would not express them with such clearness 
and candour,” he remarked. 

She did, though.” 

To you? ” Howard said incredulously. 

“ Yes, to me,” I answered. I have 
spent the afternoon with her, and she did 
me the honour to treat me as an equal and 
explain her views of life quite clearly. 
Life, she says, is a game which a woman 
plays for her own amusement, and she 
must on no account play it too seriously. I 
think myself that it might be quite a pleas- 
263 


J^ou0etDtt3^0 of CBDenrioe 


ant game if one could look at it in that light 
and if one only knew how to play it prop- 
erly.” 

It isn’t such a had game even if one 
plays it seriously,” Howard said cheer- 
fully. 

I find his optimism very irritating at 
times. It irritated me now. 

“ The worst of it is that one gets so 
interested in other people’s moves that one 
forgets to play oneself,” I said dismally, 
‘‘ and then the players one is most inter- 
ested in move on and leave one behind. I 
have been tremendously interested in Mrs. 
Greenlaw’s game, and now she is gone, and 
who is there left 1 ” 

‘‘7 am left,” he said, patting his chest 
in a self-satisfied manner. 

Oh, you! ” I said impatiently. 

“ But is Mrs. Greenlaw really gone ? ” 
he asked. ‘‘ I thought she had just come 
hack.” 

^‘Well, she goes to-morrow or next 
day.” 

I ask because I saw Peacock at her 
door as I came by, and that made me think 
that she must be there,” he remarked. 

264 


^reenlatD’0 ipoint of Witis) 


“ He must be calling to say good-bye — 
or is it a professional visit? I wonder if 
Mrs. Peacock knows ! ” I said, brightening 
at once, and settling myself down for a 
thorough gossip. 

Howard (like most men, I believe) is an 
excellent person to gossip with. He is just 
as interested in his neighbours’ affairs as 
a woman could be, but he looks at things 
from a somewhat different point of view, 
and I would rather have a good gossip with 
him than with any woman of my acquaint- 
ance. 

You have always avoided Mrs. Green- 
law because you were afraid of being fas- 
cinated by her,” I said in the course of our 
talk. “It was quite clear to me all the 
time.” 

“ I suppose you would have liked me to 
succumb to her fascinations ? ” 

“ I don’t think any the better of you for 
avoiding her so carefully,” I replied. 

“ Well, I will go in and say good-bye to 
her now if you wish it,” he said, rising from 
his chair. “ I daresay Peacock is gone by 
this time.” 

“No, I don’t want you to go to-night ; 

265 


tE^^e ^ousieivibesi of COenrioe 


there are so many things I want to talk to 
you about/’ I said, laughing and putting 
my hands on his shoulders with a slight 
pressure to facilitate his sitting down 
again. 

Don’t you think,” I began after a brief 
silence, that it is refreshing to see a per- 
son like Mrs. Greenlaw, who calmly pur- 
sues her own ends, sees what she is aiming 
at, and has the courage of her convic- 
tions? I think she is a much more satis- 
factory sort of person than I am, for in- 
stance.” 

“ Very possibly,” Howard said. “ I have 
no doubt you are right, but personally 
I find that sort of person refreshing to look 
at through a privet hedge. To live with I 
prefer a perfectly irrational, easy-going, 
impressionable person like you.” 

His remark was, of course, intended to 
rouse my anger, and it had the desired ef- 
fect. I tried to shake him. 

“ Don’t ill-treat me, Catherine,” he im- 
plored, pretending to shrink away from 
me, but at the same time seizing my hands 
and holding them firmly in his own. “ You 
must admit that I supply the logic and all 
266 


^reenlato’0 of lateto 


the solid virtues for the family! Admit 
it!” 

“I will never admit that you supply 
anything but brute force ! ” I said, seating 
myself on the arm of his chair. “ But that 
I am obliged to submit to ! ” 


18 


267 


CHAPTEE XIX 


A SEWING MEETING AT WHICH THE HOUSE- 
WIVES OP EDENRISE EXPRESS THEIR 
OPINIONS OF MRS. GREENLAW 

“ Thus, whether we’re on or we’re off, 

Some witchery seems to await you ; 

To love you is pleasant enough. 

But oh, ’tis delicious to hate you ! ” 

Thomas Moore. 

Sewing meetings are a regular institu- 
tion in Edenrise. As a rule women are 
much more at their ease — their talk is more 
spontaneous and unguarded, and their 
ideas flow more freely when they have 
needle and thread in their hands. I have 
always valued these meetings myself, 
though I have sometimes doubted whether 
they were of use to any one but the workers. 
When they were first started we used to 
make petticoats and such things for the 
poor of the parish, but as a matter of fact 
there are no poor in Edenrise, or at any 
268 


at S^etDins Meeting 


rate none who are church-goers, and with 
the spread of modern culture it would seem 
that even the poor regard flannel petticoats 
with suspicion, and the one or two old 
ladies who supported us became so exact- 
ing about the herring-boning of seams and 
the hemming of strings that we decided to 
throw them over and turn our attention to 
making shirts and hemming pocket-hand- 
kerchiefs for the soldiers in South Africa. 
Miss Green manages the affair, and we 
make the shirts of a very cheap material 
(a penny three farthings the yard), which 
is warranted not to wash, and is supposed 
to be discarded when dirty. I must say it 
often distresses me to see such excellent 
work wasted on such very poor material, 
hut people like Aunt Jane and ‘‘ Toute 
Moralite ” will not hear reason. 

‘‘ What^s worth doing at all is worth 
doing well,” Aunt Jane says severely, 
and her sewing is calculated to stand the 
wear and tear of generations of soldiers. 
I imagine her stitching and her button- 
holes remaining (a triumph of her system) 
when every vestige of the cheap shirting 
has disappeared and the men who wore 
269 


of dEoenrioe 


the shirts have returned to their native 
dust! 

With the articles we have made, we are 
invited to send any trifle or trifles which 
we think will be acceptable to soldiers on 
active service, and of course we all have 
very different views on such a subject. 
Mrs. Greenlaw, whose sewing was in strict 
accordance with her material, made a 
pocket in her shirt and put a well-filled 
cigarette case in it. Miss Green places an 
improving penny hook, or a few leaves 
from a copy of Wordsworth^s Excursion, 
which she has cut up for the purpose, in the 
folds of her garment. Mrs. Peacock insists 
on packs of cards and postage-stamps, Mrs. 
Manners on woollen comforters and tab- 
loids, Aunt Jane on Testaments and pocket- 
combs, while I hanker after air-cushions, 
but substitute cheap packets of stationery 
from motives of economy. 

I like to imagine the surprise and de- 
light of the recipients, and the exchanges 
which they will effect, bartering cigarettes 
for tabloids, cards for Testaments, and so 
on, and what a relief it will afford to the 
monotony of some isolated blockhouse ! 

270 


3L ^petting 


We were sitting round a large table in 
Mrs. Manners’s dining-room this afternoon 
for the first time since Mrs. Greenlaw’s 
departure from Edenrise and our knowl- 
edge of her departure from the narrow 
path of conventional virtue. For some 
time the subject was not touched upon. 
Two sewing-machines clattered noisily, and 
every now and then one of Mrs. Man- 
ners’s younger children would come into 
the room to announce some domestic dis- 
aster. 

“ Please, mother, Jane has sent me to 
say that she can’t boil the water for tea 
because the boiler has gone and burst.” 

Tell her to rake out the kitchen fire 
and boil the water on the gas-stove,” said 
Mrs. Manners, sewing serenely. 

In a few minutes came another child. 

Please, mother. Tiny has tumbled 
down and torn a great hole in her frock, 
and her knee is bleeding, and what is she 
to do? ” 

“ Tell her to change her frock, and 
Christina will come and see to her knee,” 
said Mrs. Manners, taking a number of 
pins out of her mouth to make the remark 
271 


of CEOenrtoe 


and replacing them as soon as she had 
made it. 

Christina got up and left the room, and 
then it was that we turned our attention to 
Mrs. Greenlaw, and as Mrs. Welwyn was 
not present — we had received a message 
from her to say that she had gone away 
for a week with her husband — ^we dealt with 
that lady somewhat ruthlessly. 

“ When I saw that newspaper article 
headed ‘A Lady who Acknowledges only 
the Bond of Love ’ I blushed for my sex ! ” 
said Mrs. Peacock so loudly that her voice 
was distinctly audible above the rattle of 
the sewing-machines and the more subdued 
voices of the other ladies. 

‘^A loveless marriage leads to sore 
temptation, and I think until she came here 
she could have had no really disinterested 
friends to advise her,” said Mrs. Manners, 
quietly hut quite clearly, having placed the 
last of her pins in her seam. 

If you think that our virtuous ex- 
ample or disinterested advice (which, by 
the way, she never asked) would he likely 
to have the least effect on a woman like 
Mrs. Greenlaw, you are very much mis- 
272 


a Meeting 


taken. She scoffs unmercifully at us and 
she makes light of virtue itself,” said Mrs. 
Peacock hotly. 

I felt bound to put in a word. 

“ Mrs. Welwyn, who knew her really 
well, better than any of us, says she acted 
from the best motives ; that she really had 
a great regard for us all and never scoffed 
after she had really begun to know us.” 

She came to scoff — and remained to 
make a dupe of Mrs. Welwyn,” said Miss 
Green in her finely satirical manner. 

Aunt Jane, who had been sewing with 
her usual vigour, now looked up and re- 
marked in her deep voice: 

‘ Who can find a virtuous woman? for 
her price is far above rubies.’ ” 

0 Aunt Jane,” I said flippantly, “ I 
really think we are more virtuous than 
Solomon’s perfect housewife! She made 
sheets and sold them, whereas we make 
shirts and give them to the soldiers in 
South Africa ! She dressed herself in ‘ pur- 
ple and fine linen,’ and burnt her candle all 
the night. I cannot see much virtue in that. 
I should like to dress in purple and fine 
linen ! ” 


278 


tETl^e l^ou^etDtbeflf of CEOenrfoe 


“ ‘ Strength and honour were her cloth- 
ing ’ also,” said Miss Green. 

That always reads to me like an after- 
thought,” I said. Solomon’s virtuous 
woman just followed her own inclinations, 
and so do we. It is all very fine for U8 to 
talk of virtue when it is more than probable 
that we have never in our lives been tempt- 
ed to be other than virtuous.” 

Our sympathies ought to go out to 
those who are tempted,” said Mrs. Man- 
ners, in her charitable way. 

Mrs. Peacock looked doubtful, knowing 
that her sympathies were not quite so elas- 
tic. Miss Green shuffled impatiently in her 
seat, and I did her the justice to believe 
that, even if she were tempted, she would 
be quite incapable of breaking the smallest 
of the commandments. 

‘‘Not, of course, that I should uphold 
Mrs. Greenlaw or ever think of advocating 
divorce,” continued Mrs. Manners. “ It ap- 
pears to me to be an extreme measure, and 
surely would never be necessary if married 
people practised ordinary patience and for- 
bearance. In daily life one must learn to 
give and take, and two people can almost 
274 


a Vetoing Meeting 


always get on together if they make up 
their minds to that/’ 

Any one in this world conld get on 
with Mrs. Manners,” I thought to myself. 

But it is so easy for the young, igno- 
rant as they are of the ways of the world, 
and led away and confused by all sorts of 
feelings, to make a wrong choice,” I said 
aloud. “It is a marvel to me that there 
are as many happy marriages as there are.” 

“ The point is that they should not be 
led away by their feelings,” said Miss 
Green. “ They should use their reason, and 
then we should not hear so much of these 
unhappy marriages.” 

“ I should be loath to admit that I had 
made such a serious mistake as to marry 
the wrong person,” said Mrs. Peacock with 
decision, “ and if I did go so far as to ad- 
mit it to myself, you would never hear me 
admit it in a court of law. Nor can I imag- 
ine myself retaining any feelings of friend- 
ship for a woman who has so lost all sense 
of propriety as to allow herself to appear 
the guilty party in a Divorce suit ! ” 

“ Did Mrs. Greenlaw appear in per- 
son?” asked Mrs. Manners* 

275 




“I believe not. Even Mrs. Greenlaw 
could hardly go so far as that, I should 
think ! ” Mrs. Peacock said, putting her 
scissors down on the table with a force that 
made me jump. To allow her letters to 
be read was going far enough in all con- 
science ! Such letters, too ! And to insist 
on a respectable girl like Sparks giving 
evidence in the case! Why, I could cry 
when I think of it all ! And when I consider 
that we have been held up to ridicule in a 
Divorce Court ” 

Mrs. Peacock broke off in the midst of 
her sentence, quite overcome. 

Mrs. Manners glanced at Christina, who 
had just come back, and evidently desiring 
on her account to keep the conversation in 
a safe channel, said: 

There is no doubt that it is good for 
us all to see different sorts of people with 
different views of life now and then, even 
though their views may be erroneous.” 

J ust so,” I said ; “ and I am sure Mrs. 
Greenlaw’s example would not be likely to 
do us any harm.” 

^Wou forget Mrs. Welwyn, who is so 
.very impressionable,” said Miss Green. 

276 


Si S)etDing Meeting 


I have never been easy in my mind 
since the affair of the Labyrinth,” remarked 
Mrs. Peacock. “ I said at the time that no 
good would come of it, and looking back, I 
see how very blind we have all been. But 
then, how could we help being taken in by 
the woman? How could we know what sort 
of person she was? She was so ladylike 
and dressed with such taste! People like 
that ought never to be allowed to settle in a 
respectable place 1 ” 

The harm she might have done in 
some places!” ejaculated Miss Green. 

We may congratulate ourselves that 
we are quite uncontaminated,” I said, 
with just a shade of sarcasm in my 
tone. 

I assure you,” Mrs. Peacock went on, 
if Dr. Peacock had suspected for a mo- 
ment the sort of woman she was he would 
not have visited her professionally even! 
He was quite upset and could hardly be- 
lieve his eyes when he read it all in the 
newspaper ! ” 

“ I wonder who will take the house 
now?” said Mrs. Manners with an admi- 
rable assumption of interest. 

277 


of (I];l)enrtoe 


Her efforts to turn the conversation 
were unsuccessful. 

“ To pass that man off as her brother ! 
Mrs. Peacock proceeded, entirely forget- 
ting her sewing. Fortunately she never 
introduced him to me and I never could 
bear the look of him! The sound of his 
voice was enough for me ! ” 

I donT think as a matter of fact she 
introduced him to any of us as her 
brother,” I said, remembering my promise 
to Mrs. Welwyn. 

That was just her artfulness,” re- 
torted Mrs. Peacock. 

Mrs. Welwyn says he simply acted the 
part of a devoted friend, and not that of a 
lover at all,” said Mrs. Manners in a pen- 
etrating whisper, her eye still on Chris- 
tina. 

“ Mrs. Welwyn will believe anything! ” 
Mrs. Peacock remarked scornfully. “ Of 
course she will marry him now! She is 
bound to marry him.” 

I rather doubt it,” I said carelessly. 

It wouldn’t surprise me if he declined 
to marry /ler,” Mrs. Peacock said in the 
same scornful tone. 

278 


at Retains Reefing 


One must make allowances for 
people,” Mrs. Manners said, and I think 
that for the moment she had entirely for- 
gotten the presence of Christina. “ One 
must make allowances, especially for wom- 
en who are unhappily married, as Mrs. 
Greenlaw was. We, situated as we are, can 
hardly imagine what she must have gone 
through.” 

‘‘ If she made a faux-pas she should 
have stood by her guns. I don’t approve 
of her conduct. Never leave a sinking 
ship!” Aunt Jane said, shaking her head. 

Nothing justifies her conduct.” 

“ The only thing that troubles me is the 
influence she has had over Mrs. Welwyn,” 
Miss Green remarked in a tragic tone. 

Do you know she told me herself that she 
declined to hear a word said against Mrs. 
Greenlaw — that she considered her conduct 
perfectly natural and justifiable under the 
circumstances, and that she hoped to keep 
her friendship as long as she lived, what- 
ever happened! I was so taken aback I 
could hardly say a word ! Fortunately, no 
one else would be likely to be influenced in 
the same way, and we are quite above being 
279 




hurt at having opprobrious epithets hurled 
at us from a Divorce Court.” 

“ But it was so unjust ! ” remarked Mrs. 
Peacock, and so ungrateful, and it shows 
such an utter lack of insight on her part.” 

“ I never gave her credit for much in- 
sight into character,” said Miss Green. 

There is nothing that leads a person so 
much astray as a little superficial clever- 
ness, such as Mrs. Greenlaw possessed.” 

Aunt Jane folded up her work and, tap- 
ping her thimble on the table, remarked in 
her most decided manner: 

I do not trouble about what she 
thought of us ; that is not to the point. And 
her conduct and opinions do not concern us 
except in so far as they were opposed to a 
law by which we are all bound. Death alone 
can break the marriage bond in my opinion, 
and in the opinion of the Church. And 
Divorce is a thing that we women should 
set our faces against.” 

Having expressed herself in this lucid 
manner. Aunt Jane took up a fresh piece 
of work and began to sew with renewed 
energy. Her views did not irritate me in 
the least, but it did irritate me to hear the 
280 


Vetoing Meeting 


lofty tone which Miss Green and Mrs. Pea- 
cock adopted about the whole affair. 

Mrs. Manners and I sat silently listen- 
ing, while they described Edenrise as hav- 
ing been innocent as the Garden of Eden 
before the Pall until the advent of Mrs. 
Greenlaw, the serpent. And now! Well, 
now it might never be able to regain its self- 
respect and native purity, after having been 
so dragged in the mire 1 It was deplorable ! 
We were, it was true, still in possession 
of our garden, but, having eaten of the 
fruit of the tree of knowledge, we knew 
that we were good and she was evil, and 
we were able to realize how terribly she had 
defiled our paradise. They talked as 
though Mrs. Greenlaw had come to Eden- 
rise with the sole object of ruining our 
morals and wrecking our happiness, and it 
was only our extraordinary virtue which 
had preserved us from contamination. 

I really think,^’ I burst out at last, 
“ that Mrs. Greenlaw has done us nothing 
but good ! She has kept us amused during 
the whole summer and supplied us with 
abundant food for gossip. And now we 
know more about her, our feeling of su- 
281 


tETlje of (II;Ofnrtoe 


periority is so pleasant that I am sure 
we ought to be full of gratitude towards 
her.” 

Mrs. Peacock looked pityingly at me. 

‘‘Besides,” I went on more seriously, 
“ do you think we should any of us be so 
ready to condemn a man who acted as she 
has done? I cannot see why we women 
need be so eager to cast a stone at one of our 
own sex who allows herself the same lati- 
tude as a man would do under the circum- 
stances. Is it because we are so conscious 
of our own weakness, that we cannot take a 
broader view of such a matter ? ” 

“ Why do we not take a higher point of 
view altogether and insist upon the same 
code of morals for men as for women?” 
said Miss Green in an aggressive manner. 

There was a dead silence. 

I looked at her pityingly, and not with- 
out some of the contempt which married 
women feel for the spinster who airs her 
views on such subjects, but I did not trust 
myself to reply, and in the awkward pause 
which followed every one made a great pre- 
tence of being absorbed in their work, while 
the clatter of the sewing-machines only 
282 


a Meeting 


seemed to make the silence more oppres- 
sive. 

It was at this well-timed moment that 
Mr. Green made his appearance, and any 
general discussion of broader views on so- 
cial subjects, or of personal views of Mrs. 
Greenlaw^s particular actions, became not 
only unsuitable, but impossible. 

We welcomed him with unwonted effu- 
sion, and there was, I thought, a little less 
assurance in his manner of greeting us, 
for though he shook hands after his usual 
intimate fashion, he made none of his stock 
remarks about the fair sex and his intru- 
sion, the crow among the doves, and so on. 
And after a few moments he crossed over 
to where Christina Manners was working 
one of the sewing-machines and began 
meekly turning the handle for her. Chris- 
tina looked up with a smile, and I saw the 
same serene and truthful expression in her 
eyes that I have so often admired in her 
mother’s. I observed that Miss Green and 
Mrs. Manners watched them for a moment, 
and then interchanged glances. 

Meanwhile I was thinking of Mrs. 
Greenlaw and the curate walking in the 
19 283 


turtle of CDOenrioe 


field of buttercups, and I seemed to hear 
again her cheerful voice saying to him, 
‘‘ Love comes to us in various forms.” 

I wondered idly if this would be the 
final form, and I was so busy with my own 
thoughts that I hardly noticed that the sew- 
ing-machines had been stopped and that 
Mr. Green had begun to read aloud a pas- 
sage from Sir Thomas Browne (an author, 
his sister had succeeded in introducing to 
our notice because the rest of the meeting 
was divided between the Sorrows of Satan 
and Eleanor, and several of us had a hazy 
notion that he had written Eab and his 
Friends). Miss Green had recommended 
him most highly, assuring us he was a 
most suitable author for such occasions, 
because it did not matter where one 
began or where one left off. 

She proved to be right in this case. It 
mattered to us very little indeed, for as 
soon as we realized that he was not what 
we considered a humorist, we entirely 
ceased to listen ! To-day, however, my 
wandering attention was recalled by words 
which I thought for the moment Mr. Green 
was speaking to us in his own person. 

284 


21 g)eit)ing Meeting 


^ No man can jnstly censure or con- 
demn another,’ ” he read in his sonorous 
voice, ‘‘‘because, indeed, no man truly 
knows another. This I perceive in myselfe, 
for I am in the dark to all the world, and 
my nearest friends behold mee but in a 
cloud. . . . Further, no man can judge 
another because no man knowes himself.’ ” 

( 1 ) 


THE END 


285 














MR. STOCKTON^S LAST NOVEL. 


Kate Bonnet. 

The Romance of a Pirate’s Daughter. By 
Frank R. Stockton. Illustrated by A. I. 
Keller and H. S. Potter. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

** A capital story.” — London Times. 

** A rattling good story.” — New York Sun. 

“ A sweet and charming story.” — Brooklyn Eagle, 

** A delightfully cheerful book.” — New York Tribune. 

“ Most ludicrous story of the year.” — New York Journal. 

“Just the book to make a dull day bright.” — Baltimore Sun. 

** One of Stockton’s most delicious creations.” — Boston Budget, 

“A live, wide-awake, bold, hesitate-at-nothing -Boston Herald. 

“ A bright and entertaining tale full of exciting incident.” — London 
Athenceum. 

“ A characteristic blending of interesting realism and absurdity.” — 
New York Life. 

“ Full of love, incident, adventure, and true Stocktonian humor.” — 
Nashville. Tenn.. American. 

“Even with the charming heroine in tears, the reader remains 
cheerful.” — New York Outlook. 

“ Nothing so fresh, picturesque, and amusing has been presented for 
a long time.” — New York Press. 

“A story of adventure written in Mr. Stockton’s characteristic 
vein.” — New York Commercial Advertiser. 

“ The funniest part of the story is the serene gravity with which the 
author chronicles events.” — San Francisco Argonaut. 

“ The appearance of a new book by Frank Stockton stirs one to an 
agreeable flicker of anticipation.” — New York Literary Digest. 

“It is charming, and no one but Mr. Stockton could have written 
it.” — Julian Hawthorne, in the Minneapolis Tribune. 

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By A. C. Laut, Author of “Lords of the North.** izmo. 
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The language is the quaint English of the period, making the book all the more charm- 
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By Frank T. Bullen, Author of The Cruise of the 
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Mr. Bullen, who has proved himself a past master of deep-water literature, affords 
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ing experiences that the unknown sailor faces as a mere incident of his daily life, and 
the hardships he encounters, are pictured with the vividness and insight that the author 
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A Story of New York. By Robert Shackleton. 1 zmo. 
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Wayside Courtships. 

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An Average Man. 

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A Member of the Third House. 

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A Story of the Modem West. 

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C>r, or Pap's Flaxen. i6mo. Boards, 50 cents. 

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Being the Memoirs of Captain Robert Moray, some- 
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The Trail of the Sword. $1.25. 

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The Trespasser. $1.25. 

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The Translation of a Savage. $1.25. 

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BOOKS BY ANTHONY HOPE 


The King’s Mirror. 

Illustrated, izmo. Cloth, ^^1.50. 

* 'TU given more sustained proof of his cleverness than in 

ne lung s Mirror.’ In elegance, delicacy, and tact it ranks with the best of 
his previous novels, while in the wide range of its portraiture and the subtlety 
ot its^ analysis it surpasses all his earlier ventures.” — London Spectator. 

Mr. Anthony Hope is at his best in this new novel. He returns in some 
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“A story of absorbing interest and one that will add greatly to the author’s 
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to associate with Mr. Anthony Hope’s work.”— Literary World. 

The Chronicles of Count Antonio. 

With Photogravure Frontispiece by S. W. Van Schaick. i zmo. 
Cloth, 

“ No adventures were ever better worth recounting than are those of Antonio 
of Monte Velluto, a very Bayard among outlaws. ... To all those whose 
pulses still stir at the recital of deeds of high courage, we may recommend this 
book. . . . The chronicle conveys the emotion of heroic adventure, and is 
picturesquely written.” — London Daily Neivs. 

“ It has literary merits all its own, of a deliberate and rather deep order. . . . 
In point of execution ‘ The Chronicles of Count Antonio ’ is the best work 
that Mr. Hope has yet done. The design is clearer, the workmanship more 
elaborate, the style more colored.” — Westminster Gazette. 

The God in the Car. 

New edition, uniform with “ The Chronicles of Count Antonio.** 
izmo. Cloth, $ 1 . 2 $, 

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think, the strongest Mr. Hope has yet written.” — London Speaker. 

“ A very remarkable book, deserving of critical analysis impossible within 
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BY CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY. 


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A Romance of the Sea. With frontispiece. i2mo. Cloth, 
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“ This story has a real beauty ; it breathes of the sea. Fenimore Cooper 
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Commodore Paul Jones. 

A new volume in the Great Commander Series, edited 
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is more interesting than any novel, and better written than most histories.” — 
Nautical Gazette. 


Reuben James. 

A Hero of the Forecastle. A new volume in the Young 
Heroes of Our Navy Series. Illustrated by George 
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“ A lively and spirited narrative.” — Boston Herald. 

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BOOKS BY J. A* ALTSHELER. 


My Captive. 

i2mo. Cloth, $1.25. 

“A mightily interesting little tale of the Revolution. ... By all odds 
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The Wilderness Road. 

A Romance of St. Clair's Defeat and Wayne's Victory. i2mo. 
Cloth, $1.50. 

“ That Mr. Altsheler has caught the wild, free spirit of the life which he 
depicts is evident on every page, and nowhere more so than in one of his final 
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In Circling Camps. 

A Romance of the American Civil War. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
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The tale covers the period from the election and the inauguration of Lincoln 
until the surrender of Lee and the entrance of the Northern army into Rich- 
mond . . . Every good American who enjoys the smell of powder and the 
crack of the rifle will appreciate the chapters that descril^ the battle of 
Gettysburg.** — The Bookman. 

A Herald of the West. 

An American Story of 1811-1815. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

“A rattling good story, and unrivalled in fiction for its presentation of 
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A Soldier of Manhattan, 

And his Adventures at Ticonderoga and Quebec. i2mo. 
Cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. 

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The Sun of Saratoga. 

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BOOKS BY MRS. EVERARD COTES 

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Those Delightful Americans. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

Mrs. Cotes’ 8 breezy novel is a new social departure,” wherein English 
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the part of the visiting strangers that arc constantly entertaining. 

A Voyage of Consolation. Illustrated, izmo. Cloth, 
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His Honour, and a Lady. Illustrated. i zmo. Cloth, 
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The Story of Sonny Sahib. Illustrated. i zmo. Cloth, 
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Vernon’s Aunt. With many Illustrations, izmo. Cloth, 

A Daughter of To-day. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

A Social Departure : How Orthododa and I Went Round 
the World by Ourselves, With 1 1 1 Illustrations by F. H. 
Townsend. izmo. Cloth, ^1.75 ; paper, 75 cents. 

An American Girl in London. With 80 Illustrations 
by F. H. Townsend, izmo. Cloth, ^1.50; paper, 50 
cents. 

The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib. With 

37 Illustrations by F. H. Townsend, izmo. Cloth, $i.§o. 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 


OC^ ^ ^^02 


OCT 16 190? 



i,"' 



1 •N 







